



Copyright N?. 



COPWilCHT DEPOSrr 



The CHILD'S Story 



Making of Louisville 



THE HEROIC AGE 

From the Inception of the Town in 1780 
to its First Charter in 1826 



FANNIE CASSEDAY DUNCAN 



ILLUSTRATED 




JOHN F». MORTON & COMPANY 

INCORPORATED 

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY 






Copyright, 1914 

BY 

Fannie CassEday Duncan 



MAR 18 J9/4 



oy 



0)CI.A362948 



To THE Memory of My Father, 

SAMUEL CASSEDAY 

Who inspired much that was best in Early Louisville, 
This Little Story of the Kentucky City is 

A TRIBUTE 



Kentucky's Order to Kentucky's Teachers 

Make me men to match my mountains; 

Men to match my forests bold; 
Sun-crowned, rugged men of stature, 

Cast in Nature's largest mold. 



What was his name ? I do not know his name. 
I only know he heard God's voice and came; 
Brought all he loved across the sea, 
To live and work for God and me ; 
Felled the ungracious oak, 
With horrid toil 
Dragged from the soil 
The thrice-gnarled roots and stubborn rock; 
With plenty filled the haggard mountain-side, 
And, when his work was done, without memorial died. 
No blaring trumpet sounded out his fame ; 
He lived, he died. I do not know his name. 

No form of bronze and no memorial stones 
vShow me the place where lie his moldering bones. 
Only a cheerful city stands, 
Builded by his hardened hands; — • 
Only ten thousand homes, 
Where, every day, 
The cheerful play 
Of love and hope and courage comes; 
These are his monuments, and these alone, — 
There is no form of bronze and no memorial stone. 

— E. E. HAI.E 

By permission of Little, Broun & Comj any 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 



Foreword 



IX, X 



I. How the Site of Louisville looked to the 

First White People i-6 

A Scalp Stretched Out to Dry. 
An Indian Brave. 

II. The Pioneer and How He Reached Kentucky, 7-12 
Fort at Boonesborough. 
Coming to Kentucky. 
Pack-Horses. 
Crossing the Cumberlands. 

III. In the Beginning I3~'5 

First Log Cabin in Louisville. 

IV. The Settlement at the Falls 16-26 

An Ohio River Flatboat of 178S. 
Corn Island and the Cabin Homes. 
An Early Type of Home. 
The Falls of the Ohio. 

V. Why this Site was Chosen 27-29 

The Trail. 

VI. The Settlement on the Mainland 3o~39 

A Midnight Raid on a Lonely Home. 

Cemetery where George Rogers Clark was 
First Buried. 

Tablet Erected by the Kentucky Society of 
Colonial Dames. 

General George Rogers Clark. 

Tablet Erected by the Sons of the Ameri- 
can Revolution. 

(vii) 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VII. How Louisville Appeared at the Beginning, 40-45 
First Log Cabin in Kentucky. 

VIII. How the Pioneer Lived and Looked .... 46-53 

A Pioneer in Full Dress. 
Buffaloes. 

IX. Louisville under Virginia Rulers 54~59 

X. Steamboat Days on the Ohio 60-66 

The Dizzy Wharf and Types of Boats. 
Fulton's Steamboat. 

XL Louisville a Kentucky Town under Kentucky 

Trustees 67-76 

The Grayson Home. 

A Stylish Pioneer Home. 

XII. Some Earliest Things in Louisville . . . . 77-112 

Some Present-Day Louisville Homes. 

An Early Fire Engine. 

On the Way to a Fire. 

Jefferson County Courthouse of ISIL 

A Worm Fence. 

An Early Type of Graves. 

John P. Morton & Company's Building. 

A Louisville Home. 

APPENDIX 

I. Recommendations of the Court of Kentucky 

to the several Towns and Garrisons ... 115 

II. The Petition of the Inhabitants of the 

County of Kentucky 117 

III. Act for Establishing the Town of Louisville 

at the Falls of the Ohio 120 



FOREWORD 

This little book appears in response to a call for a 
compact, popular history of Louisville, suited to the 
use of pupils in the public schools. It makes no 
pretense to organic unity, nor is it intended in the 
small space occupied to be complete in details. It 
is intended to be accurate as far as it goes. 

The story of Kentucky in her pioneer times is 
to a large extent the story of the American western 
frontier in the closing days of the Eighteenth and 
the opening days of the Nineteenth centuries; hence 
the study of Louisville's early people and of the 
conditions surrounding them is of more than merely 
local interest. 

The writer has long held that the history of its 
own city should be made familiar to every child in 
it, since, as President Wilson says, ''the real rootages 
of patriotism are local." Every child should learn 
how much he owes to those who have gone before 
and made possible the life he now leads with such 
easy abundance of all necessary things. He should 
know the hardships of frontier days which had to be 
borne for him, and the sort of people who worked 
out the problems of the pioneer period — from forest 
to factor}^ from factory to commercial prestige. 
Above all, the child while in school should be taught 
to know its own city, because the schools have a 
profound influence on those who in a few years must 
carry on the city's affairs and determJne its destiny. 

(ix) 



X FOREWORD 

This account of the making of Louisville confines 
itself to the heroic age of Louisville — the period from 
La Salle's voyage in search of a water route to China, 
in 1 669, to the city's first charter, in 1828. If through it 
Louisville children shall have had aroused in them a 
desire for fuller information concerning their city and 
State, they can readily find it in those books to which 
I have again and again turned for inspiration in 
its compilation — to McMurtrie, Casseday, Collins, 
Smith, Durrett, Johnston, and the archives of The 
Filson Club. I have merely skimmed the surface. 

In preparing this book I am indebted most of all 
to Miss Adeline B. Zachert, Director of Children's 
Work in the Louisville Free Public Library, now 
holding a similar position in the Public Library, 
Rochester, N. Y., at whose request it was undertaken; 
to Miss Ruby A. Henry, teacher of Commercial 
Geography in the Girls High School, Louisville; 
to the efficient members of the staff of the Louisville 
Free Public Library, Miss Caroline Q. Fullerton and 
Miss Mary Brown Humphrey, of the Reference Depart- 
ment, Miss Bernice W. Bell, Head of the Children's 
Department, and especially to Mr. George T. Settle, 
Librarian. 

Fannie Casseday Duncan. 

Louisville, Kentucky, 191 1^. 



THE 
MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 



THE CHILD'S STORY 

OF THE 

MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 



CHAPTER I 

HOW THE SITE OF LOUISVILLE LOOKED TO THE 
FIRST WHITE PEOPLE 

It seems hardly possible now, but it is true, that 
there was a time when there was no Louisville and no 
Kentucky. It was not so long ago, either. Less 
than two hundred and fifty years ago the broad 
acres, fertile valleys, and peaceful meadows which we 
now call Kentucky were deep forests, rushing streams, 
and the wild resorts of wilder animals. The land 
was not named Kentucky, but Fincastle County, 
and it belonged to Virginia. Where Louisville now 
stands there were no inhabitants except Nature's 
own things — wild flowers, wild birds, wild grape- 
vines, wildcats, bears, buffaloes, deer, wolves, foxes, 
wild turkeys, snakes, and Indians. 

The land belonged to the Indians. Nobody knows 
where they came from or when they came, or how they 
got here in America. There were many tribes of them, 
and some were much more civilized than others. 
Those who lived around Kentucky were not settled in 



THE MAKING OF LOUISVIIvLB 



villages, but moved about from place to place, with 
very rude wigwams for houses. They lived by shoot- 
ing animals and birds and catching fish. The Indian 
tribes were nearly always at war with each other 
until they got the white man to war with. Their 
fights were so bloody, and the tribes were so evenly 
matched in skill and treachery, that no one tribe 

dared to make its home in 
Kentucky; but by common 
consent any tribe could use 
this land as a hunting ground. 
And there were so many 
things here to hunt: things 
that the Indians wanted — 
things for food, for clothing, 
for huts, for ornament. So 
they were always to be seen 
dodging through the Ken- 
tucky forests. But, except 
for a few Indian tribes fring- 
ing its border, Kentucky was 
not at this time inhabited 
by human beings. If it had 
not been for the Indians near 
by, though, everything in Kentucky would have 
had a different history, and the country would have 
been much more easily and quickly settled by white 
people. The whites had first to settle the Indians 
before they could settle families, for, as vSmith 
says: "The pioneer had to expect the savage foe 
from behind every tree, within every brake, and from 
every ambush." On the frontier the white man lived 




A Scalp Stretched 
Out to Dry 




AN INDIAN BRAVE 



4 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

in an unending war with the red man, and the red 
man with the white. 

It will be remembered that all of America at one 
time belonged to the Indians, and so when white 
men began to come into it the tribes naturally feared 
what they might do to them or take from them. 
Frenchmen were the first to come into Kentucky, but 
as they came only to trade beads and trinkets for the 
fine furs which at first the Indians did not know the 
value of, the Indians did not object to the French. 
But when white men began to come into the Indians' 
country to settle there and make homes there, the 
Indians grew very fierce and used all their skill and 
treachery against them, even killing little babies and 
stealing boys and girls and carrying them away, 
nobody knew where. 

But the French were not long the only white 
people here. Very soon came the Spaniards and the 
English; and the right and title to the great valley 
of the Mississippi River became a bone of contention 
among the French, Spanish, and English, as it had 
long been between the northern and southern 
Indian tribes. 

The Indians were sometimes on the side of 
the French and sometimes took the part of the 
English or the Spanish, and soon every possible 
route in Kentucky was an Indian warpath. But 
until 1669, when the first explorers sailed down the 
Ohio to the Falls, where Louisville now stands, no 
white people of any kind had ever been seen in 
this part of Kentucky. 

The leader of this expedition was a Frenchman 



HOW THE SITE LOOKED 5 

named La Salle. He had come all the way across 
the ocean in one of the small sailing vessels used 
in 1666. When he left France he expected, by 
going westward, to find a short water- route to 
China. Near what is now Montreal, in Canada, 
the Indians" told him of some rivers which rose in 
the country far to the south of the Great Lakes 
and which, joining their waters, rushed on, a 
mighty flood, for so great a distance to the south 
that it took nine months to reach the sea. 

La Salle got the idea that this great body of 
water must be the sea he was looking for, and he 
determined to go and explore it. The Indians 
doubtless meant to describe to La Salle the meet- 
ing of the Monongahela and the x^llegheny, form- 
ing the Ohio, its junction with the rushing 
waters of the mighty Mississippi — the *' Father of 
Waters" — and the long journey southward to the 
sunny Gulf. 

Rivers, not seas, were the only highways for boats 
in the strange new land; but patient and hopeful. 
La Salle w^as lured on and on through waters and waters 
until one day in the autumn of 1669 he reached the 
Falls of the Ohio — the first white man who had 
ever seen it. Here his Indian guides declared they 
would go no farther, and they left La Salle to 
perish in the Kentucky wilderness unless he could 
find a way out, which he did. So without doubt 
Louisville territory belonged to its French discoverer. 
It seems fitting that the name of a French king, 
Louis XVI, was later given to the City by the Falls — 
Louisville. 



6 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

But La Salle was not looking for sites for a city. 
He was searching for a short way to India or China. 
He must have thought, though, as he drifted down 
the broad waters of the Ohio, how beautiful the 
New World was in its original freshness, and that 
Kentucky was certainly its garden spot. He saw 
great forests, full of brightly colored birds; he saw 
wild grapevines, growing to the tops of the gnarled 
and twisted oaks; he saw the brown sides of buffa- 
loes flecking the earth, and the earth dotted with 
beautiful flowers and blossoming herbs. The wood- 
notes of the thrushes and the flashing wings of 
thousands of strange birds made the place seem a very 
paradise. Audubon, in his book ''Birds of America," 
wrote that in the autumn of 1813 he saw "immense 
legions" of wild pigeons in Kentucky. He says 
"they were passing over the country for three days, 
and in such numbers that the light of noon was 
darkened by them as by an eclipse." He wrote, 
too, that one could often see from seven to eight 
thousand buffaloes in a single herd. They had 
trampled a wide trail through the Kentucky wilder- 
ness. If La Salle came upon such a drove, it must 
have seemed indeed strange to his eyes, used as he 
was to the courtly scenes of his native land. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PIONEER AND HOW HE REACHED KENTUCKY 

Now I think we will have to go over to Virginia 
for a while, because so many Kentuckians came 
here from Virginia, and because Virginia owned 
Kentucky. 

Whoever discovers a new country claims a right to 
it. The English had discovered Virginia, and so they 
both had and took the right to it. It was settled, by 
people who came over from England, as early as 1606. 
They did not come, as those who settled Massa- 
chusetts came, for the sake of liberty and religion. 
They came to get rich here, as other English people 
had gone to India to get rich there. King James 
was King of England at this time, and he had very 
little idea of what a vast territory he had come into 
possession of. But he sent a man to govern Virginia, 
and permitted him to give aw^ay huge tracts of land 
to all those persons who wanted to go and settle in 
the new country. 

The grant made to the Virginia Company included 
not only what is now Virginia, but also all of what 
is now West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and all the 
land west of Ohio, to the Mississippi River. No 
one then dreamed that the Ohio Valley w^ould ever 
be an empire for millions of men and women to 
build mighty cities in. It was looked upon by the 
Coast people as the fringe of Virginia — a place for 

(7) 



THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 







savages, who were kept at bay by the Alleghanies. 
Kentucky was then Fincastle County, Virginia, 
just as now Jefferson County is Jefferson County, 
Kentucky. 

By a strange destiny Kentucky separated the 
Indians of the North from the Indians of the South, 
and into this gap, in the closing days of the Seven- 
teenth Century, poured a flood of men and women 

from Virginia, 
from North Car- 
oHna, from Penn- 
sylvania, and 
from Maryland — 
men and women 
who were to be 
the first Kentuck- 
ians, and who 
were to give tone 
to all who follow- 
ed. The earliest 
of these to come were rather adventurers, like Daniel 
Boone, than seekers after homes or wealth. It was 
the report of these adventurers, who told of the fertile 
Kentucky soil and of the abundance of game and 
pelts, that turned the feet of real home-seekers to the 
land beyond the mountains. 

How did they get over the i\lleghany Mountains 
into Kentucky? If you wanted very badly to go 
somewhere and found a great mass of steep land in 
your way, what would you do? Just, I suspect, what 
those Virginians and North Carolinians did — walk 
up and down the edge of the mass, searching for some 



Fort at Boonesborough 



THE PIONEER— HOW HE REACHED KENTUCKY 9 

low place where one could cross over. If you will 
study your map you will find that the mountains 
which block the way from Virginia into the Valley 
of the Ohio run in long ridges, rank behind rank. 
You will see, too, that a space separates the Blue 
Ridge from the Alleghanies. At one point the 
Cumberland Mountains break dowm into several 




COMING TO KENTUCKY 

possible passways. One of these is at Cumberland 
Gap. It was through this gap that the home-seekers 
came into Kentucky. First came a train of pack- 
horses; then a patient herd of cattle and hogs, driven 
by boys and young men; last came a little army of 
women and children, the women plodding along, 
the children dancing with many an unnecessary step 
after the strange and beautiful things in the forest. 
The pioneer men with their guns and dogs and sharp 
knives led the whole procession as it wound in and 



10 



THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 



out and up and down the rocky gorges of the Cum- 
berland Mountains — home-seeking. 

Those who came from Pennsylvania followed a 
road that ran from Philadelphia through a desolate 
country to the hills of Western Pennsylvania. There 
they crossed the mountains to what is now Pitts- 
burgh, where the Alle- 
gheny River, sweeping 
from the north, meets 




PACK-HORSES 



the Monongahela, coming from the south, to create 
the Ohio River. Here they embarked — men and 
women and livestock and household goods — in 
keel-boats, in Kentucky flatboats, and in Indian 
pirogues, and were slowly paddled down the river 
to the hopeful, if squalid, little settlement at the 
Falls where Louisville was to be. Its only name 
then was the Beargrass Settlement. 



12 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

Such was the frame into which Louisville was to 
be set: such were the people who were to set it there. 
These men and women, who pushed on over moun- 
tains and through forests and across rushing streams 
Into the wilderness to carve out of Fincastle County, 
Virginia, the State of Kentucky and the city of Louis- 
ville, were a picked people, bred In the open fields of 
Britain and Virginia. They were full of English ideals, 
full of a manly vigor that was willing to face the 
dangers and privations of the frontier and its savage 
foes, and to do battle for everything that men must 
have in making a home in a far country while con- 
stantly raising the level of civilization. Out of it all 
came that unique specimen, the Kentuckian — patient, 
fearless, loyal to duty, quick on the trigger, but full 
of self-control. He was not skilled at all In book 
learning, but inquisitiveness and keen observation 
supplied the place of books, and he taught himself 
In a school which required judgment, skill, and a 
mighty grip on current events. 



CHAPTER III 

IN THE BEGINNING 

If La Salle saw nothing at the Falls of the Ohio 
to make him wish to land there and build a great 
city, there came others whose vision was broader. 
After La Salle went onward, many exploring parties 
passed the Falls of the Ohio and also went on. It 
was nearly a hundred years later when two men — an 
English surgeon in the royal army and an Irish land 
speculator — went wandering over Kentucky and stood 
on the edge of the roaring Falls of the Ohio and 
dreamed the dream of a great city to be builded by 
the water's side, its river laden with craft and the 
craft laden with furs and merchandise for ports and 
stations farther south; the city itself to be a great 
storehouse for commerce. 

The two men who saw this vision were John 
Connolly and John Campbell. Doctor Connolly had 
been granted two thousand acres of land in the Ken- 
tucky region for his services in the French and 
Indian War, and he was wandering around looking 
for the best place to locate. When he came to 
the Falls he concluded that right here a big city must 
some day grow. So he took his two thousand acres 
immediately opposite the Falls, fronting one mile on 
the Ohio River. The land was level enough for the 
making of streets and the building of houses almost 
without any grading from the engineer. 

(13) 



14 



THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 



John Campbell went into partnership with Con- 
nolly, buying one half of his acres. They then em- 
ployed a notable surveyor, Thomas Bullitt, to lay 
out a town for them. It is possible that Doctor 
Connolly intended to have here a great English 
town, loyal to the British flag — a point from which 




FIRST LOG CABIN IN LOUISVILLE 



England could control the Western country for 
herself. It is certain that he afterward came into 
Kentucky with just such a plan. But Campbell, 
as time showed, had no such patriotic motive. He 
meant only to enrich his own pocket-book by buy- 
ing lands cheap and selling them dear and making 
all he could out of the deal. Campbell County 
was afterward named for him, on account of his 
land holdings there. 



IN THE BEGINNING 15 

In 1774 the partners advertised lots for sale at 
the Falls and sent men to live on their land, for there 
was a condition in their grant that all granted lands 
must be occupied and improved within three years 
from the time they were granted. Stuart Sanders 
was the name of the leader of the men sent to live 
on the land. This group was the very first to take 
up a residence at the Falls and become citizens of 
Louisville. But it was a long time before the town 
was really settled. 

Stuart came in 1775. Where do you suppose 
he made his home? In the hollow of a big syca- 
more tree! He soon had cause to be afraid of the 
Indians, and he went over to an island in the 
river and lived there. It was harder for the 
Indians to reach him there, because of the Ohio 
rapids. The island came to be named Corn Island, 
and we shall hear a good deal about it. By the 
time it was occupied by settlers Stuart had learn- 
ed the trick of rowing safely through the swirling 
rapids, and he made money by carrying passengers 
back and forth. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE SETTLEMENT AT THE FALLS 

Neither Connolly nor Campbell had the honor 
of founding the city of Louisville. The honor belongs 
to a man of far higher patriotism and broader views. 
His name was George Rogers Clark. He was one of 
those who left Virginia and came to make his home 
in Kentucky, or Fincastle County. The Revolu- 
tionary War was on by this time, and ClarJ<: purposed 
to drive out the English from the Northwest, to make 
friends with the Indians if possible, and to snatch 
the whole Northwest Territory from the control of 
the English. Clark saw that Kentucky stood as a 
buffer between the foreign forts and Virginia. If 
Kentucky should be conquered by the English and 
Indians, Virginia and the Coast would become border 
lands and any extension west of the mountains would 
be impossible. 

Clark guessed that England knew the advan- 
tage to be gained if she could make Kentucky an 
ally of her own, separating it from the rest of Vir- 
ginia and making it an English stronghold, and he 
believed England would lose no time in trying to 
persuade the half-neglected Kentuckians to break 
off from their careless mother, Virginia, and to 
become part of an inland English domain. Thus 
Clark, feeling the necessity for closer relations be- 
tween Virginia and Kentucky and for better armed 

(16) 



THE SETTLEMENT AT THE FALLS 



17 



and better trained soldiers on this borderland, 
started off on horseback over the mountains to see 
the governor of Virginia and put the matter before 
him. He started October i, 1777, and it took him 
a month to reach Governor Patrick Henry. 




AN OHIO RIVER FLATBOAT OF 1788 

He began his tale to Governor Henry by saying 
that the Kentuckians were out of gunpowder, and 
that they had use for it every day. He asked for 
five hundred pounds. He had trouble in getting it. 
Then he poured out his story of what Kentucky 
meant to Virginia and to the seaboard colonists — 
what she was doing to protect them from Indian 
raids. He said that if Virginia owned Kentucky and 



18 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

wanted to hold it, she had better safeguard it; that 
if she persisted in neglecting it, she might expect 
Kentucky to look elsewhere for mothering; and he 
hinted that such mothering would not be far to seek. 
He pointed out that so long as the English held the 
lands north of the Ohio they were a perpetual menace, 
not only to Kentucky but to all the frontiers. If 
Kentucky should be captured — so he told Patrick 
Henry — Virginia would be the next point of exposure 
and attack, and would soon feel the bitterness of 
savage warfare at her own back door. 

Clark finally got all he asked for, including the 
right to fit out an army against the English in the 
Northwest. He was made a colonel of militia at 
this time, and afterward (in 1781) was promoted to 
the rank of brigadier-general. He set about raising 
troops wherever he could find men to be soldiers. 
But men were hard to find for this purpose. Each 
place had troubles of its own and its men were 
needed at home. 

After much exertion three companies, of fifty men 
each, agreed to meet Colonel Clark at the point on 
the Ohio River where the Kanawha empties into it. 
Here a few other men also joined the army. Here, 
too, Colonel Clark found a number of families (about 
twenty) who wished to make their homes in Kentucky, 
and who begged him to let them go with his party, for 
protection. He refused at first but finally took them 
in his flatboats, and afterward was very glad he had 
done so. 

George Rogers Clark was thinking more of build- 
ing up a great American nation than of settling 



20 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

families. His first need was to discover some place 
where he could organize and discipline his ragged 
army. It must be a place so situated that they 
would find it hard to desert if they got homesick or 
weary, or disliked the stern rules which he knew he 
must make. He writes in his ''Memoirs": ''After 
careful note of the land I observed a little island of 
about seventy acres, seldom or never entirely covered 
by water. I resolved to take possession and fortify, 
which I did on the — th day of June (1778), dividing 
the land among the families for gardens. On this 
island I first began to discipline my little army, 
knowing that to be the most essential point toward 
success." (The date was probably May 27th instead 
of in June.) 

This "little island" — this little Western frontier 
station in the river, over whose fortunes Colonel 
Clark felt himself called to preside — was the founda- 
tion of the city of Louisville — its very beginning. 
Note that the location was not purchased from any 
one; that no one asked permission of any one to live 
on it. Clark simply "took possession" of it and settled 
the families on it, and there was no one to say he 
must not. 

The "little island" — a long, narrow strip of land, 
standing many feet out of the water, opposite the 
Falls of the Ohio — lay about three hundred yards 
from the Kentucky shore, and was sixty or seventy 
miles from the nearest settlement. It began about 
one hundred and fifty feet east of what is now Fourth 
Street, and ran to a point nearly opposite to what is 
now Fourteenth Stree:. On it were magnificent 



THE SETTLEMENT AT THE FALLS 21 

primeval forest trees, and underneath them in most 
places grew thick masses of cane, so dense that they 
had to be chopped away with axes before the men 
could make a fort or the families could build cabins 
or plant their gardens. 

Colonel Clark found that the fact of having families 
on the island made it necessary to have better living 
quarters than would have been necessary for the 
soldiers alone. But then the families made it 
possible the sooner to have home life and its civ- 
ilizing influences for all. When Colonel Clark left 
the island to go and fight he put the women in 
charge of the island and of the supplies, leaving 
with them only ten men. Pioneer women were as 
brave as soldiers, and could shoot as well in times 
of danger. 

The day the little company landed on the island 
the soldiers and citizens began to build a fort, or 
stockade. It had twelve cabin homes in the center 
and blockhouses at the ends. The cabins were one 
story high. The blockhouses were two stories, had 
places for an outlook so that the enemy could not 
creep up unawares, and had portholes for guns. 
To build, in those days, meant to cut down trees for 
wood, and to shape the house and all its furniture 
with such rude tools as the ax, saw, auger, and adze. 
There were no nails to be had, so the ends of the 
houses were fitted together in such a way as to make 
them lap and hold. Doors were cut out of slabs of 
trees. The hinges were not of metal, but were shaped 
on to the door when it was hewed out. Roofs were 
not shingled — they, too, were made of boards, and as 



22 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

the pioneer had no nails the roofs were tied together 
in a curious way, as you may see in the illustration 
of a round-log house which is printed here. 

Why was it called "Corn Island"? There are 
several answers to this question. One is that soon 
after landing, the families planted among the stumps 
some seed corn which they had brought from their 
old homes, and the fertile virgin soil produced such 
a fine crop that the glad people named their new 
home ''Corn Island." Another story is that as they 
planted they had to carry a gun in one hand and a 
hoe in the other, which made the corn so precious 
that they called the land "Corn Island." A third 
tale — and it seems to be the best one — relates that 
some Indians who had been on a hunt in Kentucky 
chanced to drop corn kernels all about through the 
island on the fertile soil. When the whites came, in 
June, the corn was growing vigorously. The islanders 
were so glad to see fresh, green, and abundant food 
growing and nearly ready to eat that they at once 
named the blessed place "Corn Island." Corn had 
not been known in all the world until it was found 
in America. This crop alone sometimes saved a 
colony from starvation. 

Corn Island has disappeared from the face of the 
earth. Colonel R. T. Durrett, historian and founder 
of The Filson Club, tried hard to save it from destruc- 
tion. He made special pleas to Mayor Speed, Mayor 
Tomppert, and other mayors, telling them that even 
a few willows planted along the banks would save 
the island from the wash of the waves and the wastes 
of time, and not a foot' of breakwater be necessary. 



THE SETTLEMENT AT THE FALLS 



23 



But none would heed. It is to their shame that 
they did not. Those seventy, or less, acres of green 
island at the city's edge would have served as a 
pleasing memorial of the early days of our forefathers 
and be a continual monument to their triumph over 
all sorts of difficulties and denials. Every time Ken- 
tuckians saw it, it would remind them of Colonel Clark 




AN EARLY TYPE OF HOME 

and his poorly equipped little band of soldiers, less 
than two hundred, who marched out from this island 
against a powerful kingdom and its savage allies. 
It was largely Colonel Clark's Kentuckians, and 
other men that afterward became Kentuckians, 
who wrested from English rule the land that lay 
between Kentucky and the British possessions in 
Canada. Out of the area thus saved to the United 
States have since been formed the States of 



24 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

Michigan and Wisconsin and large parts of Ohio, 
Indiana, and IlHnois. 

The term ''Falls" appears hardly justifiable to the 
people of to-day. There seem now not even to be the 
rough and roaring eddies which danced in the sun- 
light before the eyes of the writer when, as a little 
girl, her geologist brother used to take her over the 
Falls at low water, his hammer in his hand and a bag 
for rare specimens of corals and shells slung over 
his shoulder. 

Wonderful and beautiful and curious were the 
fossils he collected from that old Devonian sea, 
which once so teemed with life. From all over the 
civilized world men of science used to come to 
Kentucky and to Louisville to study the fossil 
remains on the Ohio Falls. Even that great man, 
Alexander von Humboldt, wrote autograph letters 
on the subject to that same brother, one of which 
still remains in the family. Even now at lowest 
water, when the Kentucky chute is dry or very 
nearly so, one can see an ancient coral reef made 
of fine- textured "coral sand" about twenty feet in 
thickness and filled with fossiled corals exquisitely 
preserved. Louisville children should visit the Falls 
and see conditions there for themselves. 

Major W. J. Davis, of Louisville, who is an high 
authority in matters geological and who owns a 
noteworthy collection of Ohio Falls specimens, which 
he himself gathered, tells that ''at one time, not less 
than nine thousand years ago, the Ohio River did 
not flow in the channel it has at present, but followed 
a channel from northeast to southwest, through what 



26 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

is now the very heart of the city. Its northern bank 
was near what is now Main Street, while it spread 
southward to 'Buttonmould Knob,' near Jacob Park." 
Major Davis further says that at one time "the Ohio 
River had a cataract which fell from a height of 
thirty-five feet and was more than six hundred feet 
wide. The walls of this cliff . . . were composed 
of harder and softer alternate strata. The softer, 
crumbling and falling away, little by little, would in 
time break off under the pressure of the waters, and 
thus present new faces, to be beaten up in the same 
way. Thus the cascade receded gradually and was 
converted into 'rapids,' as those who came later saw 
them." 



CHAPTER V 

WHY THIS SITE WAS CHOSEN 

The Spot selected for building Louisville was 
marked out by Nature for the site of a city. In the 
hands of wise and far-seeing trustees it should have 
risen quickly to the highest prominence. It lies 
midway between the North and the South, and holds 
the best customs of each. Theodore Roosevelt once 
called it a ''gateway of the nation." North of it 
rolls the twisting, winding Ohio River, forming, in a 
horseshoe bend, both its northern and western 
boundaries. South of it lies a broad plateau, stretch- 
ing for six miles or more to the foothills of a low 
range. Eastward there is a plain which has space 
for another London. 

In 1780 a dense forest of oak, beech, walnut, 
hickory, ash, maple, buckeye, flowering poplar, 
sycamore, and other trees covered its soil. This 
forest furnished both soft and hard woods for every 
sort of use to which men put wood. The clays of 
its earth, the lime and sand of its rocks, and the 
gravel of its river-bed made, with its various 
woods, a combination which could not fail to 
change the site rapidly from a struggling frontier 
settlement to a busy center of commerce. 

Above the Falls the Ohio widens, gentle and 
lakelike, and is almost without a current for six 
miles. In 1780 islands dotted these waters and were 

(27) 



28 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

the homes and nesting-places of innumerable wild 
fowl and birds. The writer's mother has told her 
of trips she took in 1815 from the shore homes to 
the islands in search of eggs, great basketsful of 
which she helped to gather from the nests of wild 
ducks, wild geese, and wild turkeys. 

At that time Beargrass Creek poured its waters 
into the Ohio at a point about midway between what 
is now Third and Fourth streets, forming a safe and 
convenient harbor for barges and smaller boats. 
The Ohio, connected by easy portages with the Great 
Lakes and greater seas, offered the city-to-be almost 
the advantages of a coast town. Coast towns are 
centers of commerce for all bordering lands, as well as 
storehouses for goods awaiting trade. At Louisville's 
front gate the Ohio flowed to the Mississippi, and the 
Mississippi to the sea. 

And, as though this were not enough. Nature had 
further decreed that here a city must be, for the Falls 
broke up the river, so that when it was low, barges, 
flatboats, and all river craft had to be unloaded at 
the head of the Falls and reloaded at the foot. It 
was of course necessary to haul the unloaded freight 
or passengers around the Falls and then reload 
into other boats waiting at the foot, where there was 
a town which rivaled Louisville in those days — Ship- 
pingport. This town, called at first Campbelltown, 
stood at the head of travel for the lower Ohio, 
just as Louisville was at the foot of it for the upper 
Ohio. The necessity for hauling goods around the 
Falls made business for horses, men, wagons, drays, 
inns, clerks, and roustabouts. Added to these good 



WHY THIS SITE WAS CHOSEN 



29 



things for this new town, and more valuable than any 
one of them, was the advertisement it got from 
people who passed through it or who traded within 
its borders. Then as now, Louisville was noted for 
its cordial hospitality. Almost every day flatboats 
filled with home-seekers landed at the Falls, while 
pack-horses brought another stream of people over 
Daniel Boone's Wilderness Road from Cumberland 
Gap and beyond. 




THE TRAIL 



CHAPTER VI 

THE SETTLEMENT ON THE MAINLAND 

But we have strayed from our story. We left 
Colonel Clark and his men and the pioneer families 
on Corn Island, some trying to get the homes and 
gardens in order, others building a fort against 
attacks of Indians, and Colonel Clark drilling his 
soldiers for the British and Indian campaign. 

It was a bright June day in 1778 when Colonel 
Clark's little ''band of nation-builders," less than two 
hundred strong, filed into their frail boats to go and 
win the Northwest. In order to catch the current 
they had to row a mile upstream and then row down 
again in the current. To have a boat in just the 
proper angle for clearing the Falls was called ''shooting 
the falls." On that June morning the sun went into 
a total eclipse just as the boats "shot the falls." 
The soldiers, especially the superstitious ones, were 
greatly frightened, and so were the women and 
children on the island. 

The story of Colonel Clark's campaign does not 
belong to Louisville's history, so we may not at this 
time tell of it. It was well planned, quickly executed, 
and notably successful. A more brilliant campaign 
has seldom if ever been conducted by any general. 
Colonel Clark has been called by historians "the 
man of destiny," but his "destiny" was made up 

(30) 



THE SETTLEMENT ON THE MAINLAND 



31 



largely of pure grit, real determination, faith in 
himself and in God, and true patriotism. 

As he does not again enter largely into the story 
of early Louisville, we will say here that his country 
did not appreciate him or his great service to the 
young nation. Before he died a tardy recogni- 




A MIDNIGHT RAID ON A LONELY HOME 

tion was offered him by Virginia, but he died a 
broken-hearted man. His last embittered days 
were not pleasing to himself nor to those who 
must love and honor him for his high character 
as a man and a soldier. 

He became paralyzed and died on February 
13, 1 81 8, at the home of his sister, Mrs. Croghan, 
at Locust Grove, near Louisville. He was buried 



32 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

in the family burying-ground on the place. His 
body rested there for fifty-one years. Then it was 
taken up by grateful citizens of Louisville and placed 
in our own beautiful Cave Hill cemetery, where it 
lies to-day. All about him — south, north, east, and 
west — long streets roar with commerce where was 
once the wilderness which he so bravely entered and 
won for us. When loving and grateful Kentuckians 
went to Locust Grove to find his remains and bring 
them to Cave Hill, there was no mark on his grave 
to distinguish it from others in the same family lot. 
Nine graves were opened and closed before the 
respectful seekers were able to identify the body of 
General George Rogers Clark. 

It is essentially fitting that the citizens of Louis- 
ville should honor the grave and revere the memory 
of George Rogers Clark, for he was never so busy as 
to forget, in all his brilliant career as soldier and leader, 
the little band of settlers on Corn Island. As soon 
as he "could spare the men he sent Major Linn with 
a body of discharged soldiers back to the Falls to 
tell the islanders that it would be safe for them now 
to move from the island to the shore, or mainland, 
if they would build a fort there before they moved. 
They were very glad of this news, for they had begun 
to feel very much cramped on their island since 
many other people had come to share it. People 
in those days had not learned to live on small areas. 
They wanted big gardens, big yards, big farms. 

On the mainland, at the foot of what is now 
Twelfth Street, there was a ravine, just opposite to 
the cabin homes on the island. In this ravine was 



THE SETTLEMENT ON THE MAINLAND 33 

a spring of clear, cold water. Because of the spring 
and of the shelter of the ravine, the islanders resolved 
to build the fort there. The settlers could row 
back and forth easily from the island to the shore 
while they were erecting the fort. This fort was tw^o 
hundred feet long by one hundred feet wide. The 




CEMETERY WHERE GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 
WAS FIRST BURIED 

name has been forgotten, but it was probably called 
Fort Finney. 

In June, 1912, the Sons of the American Revolu- 
tion, a patriotic and historical society formed of 
men whose ancestors had fought in the wars of 
the Revolution, erected a fountain on the site 
of this old fort, and it was dedicated, through 
the president of the society, Mr. R. C. Ballard 



34 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

Thruston, to the memory of those soldiers. We 
now call it "The Fort-on-the-Shore." It was oc- 
cupied by troops of the American Revolution for 
four years. 

By Christmas (1778) the fort was nearly ready, 
and the pioneers made up their minds to move into 
it for a Christmas dinner— the first Christmas dinner 
in the little settlement, which at this time did not 
even have a name. It was to be a sort of Thanks- 
giving dinner too. You might think it a strange Christ- 
mas dinner, but the men and women and little chil- 
dren of the settlement thought it very fine. I will 
tell you what they had: Fish, of course — one could 
get delicious fish easily from the nearby river, and the 
islanders knew delicious ways of cooking it. They 
had pigeons, venison steak, buffalo hump, wild 
turkey, grouse, and opossum. They had hominy, 
corn bread baked in the ashes, pumpkin pies, and 
nuts. And they had vigorous appetites. 

After they had eaten all they could, the young 
folks wanted to dance. The only musical instru- 
ment on the island was an old fiddle. The fiddle 
belonged to negro Cato, and Cato belonged to 
Captain Donne. Cato used to play it by the hour 
under the shade of a great sycamore tree. No one 
thought of him as idling while he was playing, for 
the people could drill, or hoe, or build, all the bet- 
ter for the music. It served to make the days less 
monotonous. But Cato had broken or worn out all 
his fiddle-strings before Christmas, and, as you know, 
there was no place where he could buy others. 

Just when things looked blackest for the dance. 



THE SETTLEMENT ON THE MAINLAND 35 

a boat came along with a Frenchman on board. He 
was heard to say something about his fiddle, and 
the girls in the fort gathered about him and begged 
him for some dance music. He was willing enough, 
but he did not know their kind of dances or the sort 
of music they could dance to. He tried a minuet. 
The girls had never heard of it. He tried a Branly. 
It was too stately for these girls. He then played for 
the French dance, pavane. But he was disgusted 
at the rough way the settler boys and girls romped in 
their dancing, and he quit. In the meantime, by 
some means best known to himself, Cato had gotten 
hold of some new fiddle-strings and he appeared, 
grinning, and sawed out an old Virginia reel. Then 
out scampered our ancestors and danced and ''jigged 
it off " until break of day. Thus happily, with thanks- 
giving and joy, with music and dance, began Louis- 
ville's settlement on the mainland. 

Louisville was not commenced, as has been 
generally thought, under an act of the Virginia 
Legislature. This Christmas dinner was eaten in 
December, 1778. The Virginia act, establishing the 
town, was passed more than a year later. May i, 1780. 

On April i, 1779, the Virginia authorities sent out 
letters to Kentucky garrisons and towns, advising 
them what to do about buying and building homes 
in Kentucky County. They asked Louisville, among 
other things, to choose three or more of ''the most 
judicious of their body" and intrust to them the rules 
for the town. The Louisville people chose seven. 
The letter thus sent will be found as Appendix Num- 
ber I at the end of this book. 



36 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

These citizen-chosen trustees at once began to 
study the conditions under which the town was 
formed, and the study made them uneasy about 
their right to the land upon which the town was 
built. They found that it was on the one thousand 
acres which had been granted to Doctor Connolly, 
and that it had not been bought from him nor 
had he deeded it to them. Connolly had taken up 
arms against the colonies, and so his lands were 
considered no longer to belong to him. 

But the new trustees knew that before they could 
get a clear title to them the Virginia Legislature 
must legally say that Connolly could make no claim 
on them and that they belonged to the Beargrass 
Settlement. So the citizens petitioned the Legisla- 
ture, and the Legislature then created the town. 
May I, 1780. The petition may be found as Appen- 
dix Number II at the end of this book. Appendix 
Number III is the act of legislation which created 
the town. In this act the Virginia Legislature 
appointed its own trustees, and the citizen-chosen 
men went out of office. While the town was being 
thus legally established Colonel Clark asked that it 
be named after Louis XVI, King of France. So it 
was then named Louisville. Before that it had only 
been known as the Beargrass Settlement. 

After General Clark came back to Kentucky from 
the wars, in 1782, this fort on Twelfth Street was 
given up for a new and very strong fort which was 
built along the river front, on the north side of Main 
Street and immediately upon the "second bank" of 
the river. It occupied the space just south of where 



THE SETTLEMENT ON THE MAINLAND 37 

the Union Depot now stands.. The entrance to the 
fort is thought to have been where Seventh and Main 
streets now intersect. The fort was named Fort 
Nelson, in honor of General Thomas Nelson, third 
governor of Virginia. On this spot the Kentucky 
Society of the Colonial Dames of America have lately 
honored themselves in honoring the heroes of that day 
by erecting a monument to their memory. It was 
unveiled with sweet and tender ceremony on Novem- 
ber 7, 1913, having this wording: 



To the glory of God and in grateful remem- 
brance of these our ancestors who through evil 
report and loss of fortune, through suffering 
and death, maintained stout hearts and laid 
the foundation of our country, we, the Ken- 
tucky Society of Colonial Dames of America, 
have built this monument. 



Colonel Richard Chenowith, whose descendants 
are still a part of Louisville life, was the architect 
of the first fort, the one probably named Finney; 
but the second one. Fort Nelson, was much 
stronger. It was surrounded by a ditch eight feet 
wide and ten feet deep. In the middle of this was 
a row of sharp pickets. There were breastworks of 
log pens filled with earth, and on top of these, 
pickets again, ten feet high. On the river side they 
needed no breastworks — the long slope of the river 
bank stood for defense on that side. Inside the 
fort was a double fortified six-pounder which Clark 



3S 



THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 



had captured in his campaign. The Indians stood 
in great awe of this fort and of General Clark, who 
they, had good reason to know was a very stern and 
severe commander and showed little compassion to- 
ward his foes. We have an American saying, "In 
time of peace, prepare for war." General Clark had 
perhaps never heard it, but he acted as if he had, 




GENERAL GEORGE ROGERS CLARK 



and no doubt he averted much bloodshed by being 
always ready against possible trouble. 

There was another station commenced in the 
immediate neighborhood of the Falls in 1779. 
Colonel John Floyd, one of the most notable men 
of that period, had been appointed by the Virginia 
Legislature as Colonel of Jefferson County when 
the County of Kentucky was divided into three 
counties. Colonel Floyd was not only a fine survey- 
or, but he also took a great share in the defense 
of the settlements and in their development. 



THE SETTLEMENT ON THE MAINLAND 39 

Seeking these things, he built a blockhouse and 
started a station near what is now Third and 
Main streets. For good reasons he soon abandon- 
ed this and erected another, about six miles farther 
away, on Beargrass Creek — one that bore his name 
and became well known as a wilderness station. 
In August, 19 13, the same patriotic society, the 
Sons of the American Revolution, erected a memo- 
rial of this station and of Colonel John Floyd at 
Third and Main streets. The memorial tablet is 
inscribed thus: 



Erected in August 

1913 

BY THE Ky. Society 

OF THE Sons 

OF THE American 

Revolution, 

ICO Yards 

Southeast 

OF THE Station 

Erected in 1779 

BY Col. John Floyd 



CHAPTER VII 

HOW LOUISVILLE APPEARED AT THE BEGINNING 

In 1780 the small town called Louisville was not 
very pleasing to the eye. The land was honey- 
combed with ponds and with stagnant pools, left 
by the receding waters of the river. This made the 
village both unsightly and unhealthful. It was then 
almost as necessary for people to get used to the 
climate here as it now is for people to get used to 
the climate of Africa. Mosquitoes and flies abounded, 
and all sorts of fevers took possession of the inhabi- 
tants in summer. In fact, Louisville was once called 
"the graveyard of the West." Now it is one of the 
most healthful cities of the United States. 

The largest of the ponds was called "Long Pond." 
It began at what is now Sixth and Market streets, 
turned a little to the southwest, and ended at Six- 
teenth Street. It was for many years a fashionable 
place for skating. 

The pond second in size was "Grayson's Pond." 
It was a rarely beautiful pond, fed by a fresh, clear 
spring and stocked with fine fish. It began at a 
point just back of the present jail and extended 
westwardly halfway to Seventh Street, in the form 
of an ellipse. All around it were great forest trees, 
and circling it was a rich turf of Kentucky blue- 
grass and white clover. 

(40) 



HOW LOUISVILLE APPEARED AT THE BEGINNING 41 

On the border of this pond was a mound 
which had been raised in prehistoric times by the 
ancient Mound Builders. On the mound, years after 
the time of which we are teUing, John Gwathmey 
built the queer house still standing there. He sold 
it to Colonel Grayson, and the pond was so beautified 
by Colonel Grayson that it came to be known as 
"Grayson's Pond." It was the scene of many bap- 
tisms by immersion, as well as of many skating 
parties and ice dances. 

Another big pond was at the intersection of Fourth 
and Jefferson streets. A creek ran through what is 
now York Street. Ben Casseday tells that "the 
face of Louisville resembled an archipelago, so full 
was it of 'land surrounded by water'." Besides the 
ponds, there were many deep mud-holes. 

It was not until 1824 that the Kentucky Legisla- 
ture took definite action on this state of affairs and 
appointed a Board of Health, with authority to 
examine into the causes of the epidemics that were 
ravaging Louisville. Then, instead of imposing a 
tax to secure funds for drainage, the Legislature 
authorized a lottery for that purpose. 

Colonel Durrett tells that there was some queer 
building done in Louisville in its early days. James 
Patton bought a lot at Eighth and Main streets that 
had a hollow tree on it. The tree was of unusual 
size, and he built his house around it so as 
to include the hollow trunk as a room. Squire 
Boone, brother of Daniel Boone, determined to 
build a house that would outshine all others, so he 
got long boards from a disused flatboat in which a 



42 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

family had come to Louisville. These boards he 
set up endwise, using wooden pegs to fasten them to 
cross-pieces, for nails were very scarce and costly. 
The house looked all right at first, but when the 
water-soaked boards began to dry in the sunshine 
they warped and twisted in every direction, and the 
roof turned up and down as if it were crazy. Squire 
was actually laughed out of town. He was glad 
enough to leave and make his home in the fort at 
Shelbyville. 

Early log houses had no window-glass. They had 
solid wooden shutters, fastened with a hasp. A 
little lad in Louisville who saw the first house with 
glass windows ran home to his mother with all speed, 
shouting ''Oh, Ma, come see a house with specs on!" 
The solid wooden doors, swung on wooden pegs, were 
fastened on the inside by a wooden latch. Through 
a hole in the latch a string was passed, so that by it 
the door could be opened from without. If a visitor 
found the string on the outside of the door he was 
welcome to pull it and enter. If the family did not 
want visitors they simply pulled the latch-string 
inside. From this came the expression, "My latch- 
string is always on the outside for you." Just at the 
right of the door, on the inside, were the great horns 
of animals such as elk, deer, or oxen. These were 
used as rests for rifles, which were always kept 
close at hand. 

But if the houses were queer, the streets were 
queerer. They were not streets at all, only country 
roads — muddy in winter, dusty in summer, and full 
of tree-stumps. Cows and chickens and hogs wan- 



HOW LOUISVILLE APPEARED AT THE BEGINNING 43 

dered over them at will, making unsightly tracks 
through the mud or dust, and leaving trails of flies 
and dirt. Hog-pens were allowed in the public 
streets. Any one that wanted to could dig clay 
from the middle of the road for brick-making. 
Sidewalks were boards taken from the discarded 




FIRST LOG CABIN IN KENTUCKY 

boats which had brought families down the river. 
Half-logs were thought to be all right for crossings 
over pools or mud-holes. Houses were not com- 
pelled to be built in line; every man built just 
where it pleased him. 

No one could enforce sanitation on his neigh- 
bor. It is no wonder that a terrible scourge of 
disease broke out in the place and took a big per 
cent of the townspeople. This bad condition of 



44 THE MAKING OF LOUIvSVILLE 

things lasted from the time that the town was 
first settled, all through the days of the Virginia 
trustees, and down to 1792, when Kentucky be- 
came a State and Louisville, Virginia, became 
Louisville, Kentucky. In fact there was no really 
great change for the better until after the- epidemic 
of 1822. 

No one could now identify the boundaries of 
Louisville as recorded in 18 19 by Doctor McMurtrie, 
for the "oak tree" and the ''flat rock with a square 
hole in it," which he mentions, have long since dis- 
appeared. But it is known that the town ran from 
the river to Chestnut Street and from East Street 
to Twelfth. In 1789 the w^hole of the town was within 
these limits. East Street is now called Brook Street. 
Nearly every street is now differently named from 
what it then was. The first streets cut through 
southward were East, West, and Center. 

The first survey of the town was made by Captain 
Thomas Bullitt, in August, 1773. No record of it 
has been preserved. The second survey, made by 
Colonel Pope in 1780, laid the town off in half-acre 
lots as far south as Jefferson Street. Then another 
man, William Shannon, platted the rest of it, in 1788. 
He divided it in this way: all lots between Jefferson 
and Walnut streets were five-acre lots; between 
Walnut and Chestnut streets the lots were all ten 
acres; Broadway was the limit of the- town. Be- 
yond that was dense forest. These deep lots were 
auctioned off at prices varying from tw^enty 
dollars to fourteen hundred dollars. A lot on 
Main Street near Fourth was auctioned off for a 



HOW LOUISVILLE APPEARED AT THE BEGINNING 45 

young horse. The horse was afterward sold for 
twenty dollars. 

Just to compare that day with the present time, 
it is interesting to know that in 1912 a lot on the 
corner of Fourth and Walnut streets was sold for 
$350,000. The building occupying it — a church 
building, beautiful and impressive — was torn down 
and sold for junk. This was not a five-acre lot — it 
was sold by the foot. The building permits for the 
same year (1912) amounted to $7,945,091. 



CHAPTER VIII 

HOW THE PIONEER LIVED AND LOOKED 

Pioneers are the people who go first into a new 
and strange country to settle it. The men and women 
of whom this book tells were Kentucky pioneers. 
At the time of which we are writing there were no 
railroads, no steamboats, no telegraphs, in all the 
world. There were no good roads in Kentucky. 
The only highways were the streams or their dry 
beds. Now and then one came upon wide and well- 
trodden paths which had been made by the feet of 
thousands of wild animals that went tramping up 
and down the wilderness in search of salt. 

Even Daniel Boone's famous "Wilderness Road" 
would not now be thought good at all. It was 
simply a blazed trail, with the undergrowth cut 
away, the holes filled up or else bridged over with 
logs, stumps and rocks taken out of the way, and 
the earth beaten down by the restless feet of pio- 
neers and pack-horses. It ran from Cumberland 
Gap, in the southern corner of Kentucky, through 
Crab Orchard in Kentucky. Louisville was its 
western extremity. There was, too, a ''Warriors' 
Trace": a good path for Indians, but not safe for 
white people. 

Roads, in our sense of the term, there were 
none. Travel meant days of solitude in unbroken 
forests; it meant nights of loneliness without shel- 

(46) 



HOW THE PIONEER LIVED AND LOOKED 47 

ter, and within call of nothing except wild beasts 
and redskins. The only comfortable way to travel 
was on horseback. Sometimes a long trip would 
be made by two persons with one horse. The 
man first to mount would ride ahead for a certain 
distance that would be agreed upon ; then he would 
get down and tie the horse. The second man, 
who had walked the distance, would reach the horse 
about the time it had rested ; he then got on and rode, 
tying the horse, in turn, for the other "man. People 
called this method ''ride and tie." 

The Kentucky pioneers lacked almost everything 
we now think we could not do without. Their rude 
homes were cabins. Their walls had no plaster and 
their windows no glass. When darkness came down 
the better houses might be lighted with homemade 
tallow candles, but poorer people had to be content 
with a bit of loosely woven cloth burning in a cup of 
grease. Some used sticks of pitch-pine, lighted at 
the hearth fire. 

There were no stoves and no grates. The pio- 
neer built huge cavernous fireplaces, which occu- 
pied nearly half of one side of the room. A long 
iron rod, called a crane, was hinged to the side wall of 
the fireplace in such a way that it could be turned 
outward over the coals or back against the wall. 
The crane was hooked at the end, and on this the cook 
hung pots or used it for roasting meats. In the winter, 
huge logs were kept burning in the far end of this 
fireplace, while smaller logs and light sticks were at 
hand, ready to be thrown on for a blaze or to secure 
redhot coals for baking purposes. The bake-kettle 



48 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

was a sort of deep skillet on tiny pegs or feet, with a 
lid like an inverted saucer. One could pop corn in 
it, or roast meat or bake bread. 

Apples were roasted by hanging them on a 
string above the redhot coals. As the apples got hot 
they would spin around and around, the skin would 
pop, and delicious juice sizzle and boil out of them. 
The fine odor would fill the house. Sometimes 
children roasted eggs, or toasted corn in the shuck, 
over the red coals. Corn was made into many 
forms of food, such as hominy, mush, johnny-cake, 
egg pone, hoe-cake, and batter-bread. Corn w^as a 
great blessing to the early settlers. Johnny-cake 
was first named journey-cake, from the fact that it 
was so much used by the pioneers when they went 
on journeys or hunts. 

The pioneer's dress was very picturesque. It 
consisted of a loose hunting shirt, made of homespun 
cloth or deerskin. This garment reached halfway 
to the knees, and was wide enough across the breast 
to form a pouch into which he could put many and 
divers things — a gun rag, some journey-cake, cooked 
meat, or anything he might need on a long tramp. 
His cap was oftenest a coonskin, wdth the head left 
on for an ornament. The tail was left on too, and hung 
down behind over the man's neck. His legs were 
covered with leggings of deerskin, which the young- 
er men ornamented with fringe. Every man wore a 
l)elt around his waist, over his hunting shirt. In this 
belt hung a dirk, a bullet-bag, a powder-horn, and a 
knife or tomahawk. 

The dress of the women was not so picturesque. 







A PIONEER IN FULL DRESS 



50 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

But it followed as many fashions in cut and color as 
there were individual tastes, or as they could find 
dyestuffs in the wilderness. Women generally wore 
a homespun linsey-woolsey petticoat, and over this 
a short dress of some other material. If linen was 
wanted, ''the flax was sown and weeded, pulled and 
retted, broken and swingled." This process took 
nearly a year before the flax was ready for spinning 
for weaving, next for bleaching on the grass, and 
then for making up. When men wanted woolen 
goods, sheep were sheared and the wool was dyed 
and spun and woven into cloth at home. 

The pioneer's wife was a busy woman. She knew 
how to make cloth from nettle leaves, sugar from 
maple-tree sap, tea from sassafras roots, thread from 
wood fibre, soap from wood ashes. She and her 
children learned to make horse-collars, shoes, and 
mats. They made rope out of corn shucks, shoes 
and moccasins out of deer hides. 

If the pioneer woman led a busy and useful life, 
so did her husband. He entered the wilderness 
almost entirely without tools. He had to build his 
house without nails; to make brooms without broom- 
corn; to shape beehives and the baby's cradle out 
of hollow trees ; to carve the family furniture with an 
ax, an auger, and an adze. 

The man was the hunter for the family. He 
trapped fur-bearing animals and sold the pelts by 
exchanging them for other things. There was no 
coin in the country. Men traded hides and meat and 
salt for goods. Enough linsey-woolsey for a dress 
was worth two beaver and two mink skins. A 



HOW THE PIONEER LIVED AND LOOKED 51 

dressed buckskin equaled in value two wildcat, two 
fox, four coon, or eight mink skins. Any of these 
things could be traded for sugar, flour, tobacco, dry 
goods, etc. By way of comparing those days with 
ours, the price paid for some skins in the spring 
of 19 1 3 is here quoted in the following telegram from 
Seattle to a New York paper in September, 191 3: 
''Twenty-five hundred dollars for an undressed black 
fox skin was the record price paid here last week." 

The children of the early settlers of Louisville 
soon got to be as helpful as grown folks. It was 
their duty to go into the woods with the men and find 
the best back-logs for the big fireplaces, and to bring 
in great armfuls of light wood. A fire once lighted 
on the family hearth was never allowed to go out, for 
the pioneer had no matches. The writer of these 
sketches knows of a cabin in the woods of North 
Carolina where the fire on the hearthstone has been 
burning for more than sixty years. She has heard 
old people say that if by any chance, in those early 
days, a fire in a country home did go out, a little 
darky was put on horseback and sent to the near- 
est neighbor to "borrow a chunk of .fire." When 
he got it he dashed back home as fast as his horse 
could go, before the coal died out. Out of this 
custom came the expression sometimes used to a 
hurried visitor, "Have you just come for a chunk 
of fire?" 

Kentucky was early noted for its great salt licks. 
In pioneer days it used to export salt. In order to 
get a bushel of salt it was necessary to boil down about 
eight hundred gallons of salty water. "Salt licks" 



52 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

were places where this salty water oozed up out of 
the earth. Where the sun evaporated the water 
the salt formed a white powder on the surface of the 
earth. The name "lick" came from the fact that 
wild animals would travel in herds for many miles 
to lick up the salt they needed. Long before white 
men came to Kentucky there were broad trails 
trodden and beaten down hard by buffalo, elk, and 
deer on their way to the licks. 

Making salt was a thing involving much risk. 
The Indians well knew that the settlers must have 
salt, and they were nearly always prowling about 
among the trees to kill the white salt-makers. The 
white men used to go in large companies to the 
licks, where they formed a camp and set a watch 
as a lookout against the Indians while the water was 
being boiled down. This is what they were doing 
when Daniel Boone was captured and carried off by 
a war party, from which he afterward escaped. 

The pioneer boy soon became very quick-witted 
as to things in Nature. He knew in which direction 
he was traveling by the bark on the trees. It was 
denser and rougher on the north side of the tree, and 
moss grew thicker on that side. He could tell the 
hour of the day by looking at his own shadow. He 
guessed whether the winter was going to be a cold 
one or a mild one by the depth of the fur on the ani- 
mals, by the feathers on the wild goose, or by the 
thickness of the shuck on the corn. In stormy 
weather his woodcraft taught him to hunt for deer 
in sheltered places, and he did not waste time in 
searching for them where they w^ere not likely to be 



HOW THE PIONEER LIVED AND LOOKED 



53 



found. In rainy weather he looked for them in 
high lands in the woods. 

The pioneer boy learned to judge the course of 
the breeze by putting his finger in his mouth until 
it became quite warm, then holding it high above 
his head. The side of his finger which soonest 
grew cool showed him which way the air was moving. 




BUFFALOES 

Hunters came to know certain gangs or herds of 
deer in their ranges. The cunning of the old buck and 
the cunning of the hunter were often pitted against 
each other. A child soon learned the call of certain 
birds for their mates, and could by mocking them lure 
the birds within gunshot. All children could hoot 
like an owl, or gobble like a turkey, or honk like a 
wild goose. The acts and signals now being learned 
by Boy Scouts were a regular part of the pioneer 
boy's training. 



CHAPTER IX 

LOUISVILLE UNDER VIRGINIA RULERS 

It was out of such conditions, and by such 
mighty wrestlers at close grip with their environment, 
that Louisville came into existence. Whatever were 
the terrors of the road or the defects of the immature 
town, people came pouring into it, nothing daunted. 
In the spring of 1780 no less than three hundred 
family boats came to the Falls, bringing in them over 
seven hundred people. They came from the east and 
the southeast. None came from the west. The 
western limit of United States territory at that 
time was the Mississippi River. Beyond that were 
regions of unbroken forest or illimitable prairie, 
seeming to our ancestors farther away than now 
seem to us the heart of Alaska or the snows 
of Siberia. 

Of the inhabitants of the United States in 1790, 
about one seventh were negro slaves. They were 
in every State except Massachusetts. Into Louis- 
ville they came trooping with their owners, and great 
comfort their owners found in them. Cheerfully and 
loyally they bared their backs to the burden, shoulder 
to shoulder with the white men, and their sunny, 
mirth-loving natures gave a touch of gayety to the 
blackest hours. They were joyous, courageous, and 
faithful. They would sell their lives for their masters 
in battle, or would stay patiently at home with the 

(54) 



LOUISVILLE UNDER VIRGINIA RULERS 55 

women and children, unhesitatingly risking their 
own lives for them against the attacks of the redskins. 
No one ever heard of a breach of trust on the part 
of a negro slave of the olden time, if his master 
reposed trust in him. 

When Virginia established the town by law, some 
of the people here were still living on Corn Island. 
Others were housed in the fort at the foot of Twelfth 
Street. Still others were building homes wherever 
they had lots, but always within sound of the fort 
guns, for people were really more exposed on the 
mainland than they had been on the island. Just 
beyond Louisville things were still very dangerous. 
Once those living in the fort at Shelbyville became 
alarmed and resolved to come to Louisville for 
protection. On the way they were surprised by 
Indians. There was a fight; some were killed and 
scalped, and only a few reached the town in safety. 

The first winter in Louisville (1779-80) was a 
terrible one for the poor settlers. It was so cold that 
the river froze solid from shore to shore, and ice 
cakes were heaped up in it here and there as high as 
the tops of the cabins. Fowls and birds froze on 
their perches. Wolves and panthers forsook the 
forests and trooped through the town after nightfall, 
howling with hunger. Bears trotted up and down 
the river's edge, seeking food. Mothers were afraid to 
let their children out of their sight. The log cabins 
had not been built for such cold weather, and the 
people had all they could do to keep from freezing to 
death. No one slept well. Collins says of this time: 
''All through the hours of the night the slumbers of 



56 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILIvE 

the suffering pioneers were disturbed by the roaring 
and struggHng of herds of distressed buffaloes and 
other wild animals who fought and bellowed and strove 
to reach positions of shelter from the winds and of 
warmth against the chimneys of the rude log cabins." 

But, for all that, as soon as the snows began to 
melt, the river brought fresh boatloads of people and 
the Wilderness Road brought new pack-horses laden 
with goods for the little town by the Falls. 

The men named by the Virginia Legislature to 
have control over Louisville seem to have been neither 
very wise nor very courageous. They made some 
good resolutions, but they did not have the backbone 
to see that they were carried out. For example, 
they resolved that each lot-owner on Main Street 
should be required to donate thirty feet off the front 
of his lot, so as to make Main Street one hundred 
and twenty feet wide. It is now ninety feet wide.- 
Broadway is one hundred and twenty feet wide. 
How much better it would be if Main Street were as 
wide as Broadway is. It would have meant much 
to the commerce of the town at a time when all 
commercial transactions were centered on Main 
Street and the whole street was full of drays and 
carts and wagons and barrels and hogsheads and 
trucks and horses and men — as this writer has often 
seen it in the busy season of steamboat days. 

The next thing which the Virginia trustees resolved 
was that a canal should be cut around the Falls. 
But it was 1830 before any canal was ready. Even 
then it was not constructed by those Virginia trustees. 
They resolved, too, that one half of Doctor Connolly's 



LOUISVILLE UNDER VIRGINIA RULERS 57 

forfeited land should be laid off into lots and sold at 
public auction in April, 1780. But before April 
the Indians came, murdering and stealing and caus- 
ing so much terror that no one thought of going 
to an auction. They resolved to have a grist-mill 
put up, so as to use the water-power wasting at the 
Falls: but it was thirty years before any mill was 
erected, and then it was built by the private capital 
of the Tarascon brothers, who lost heavily by it. 

The lack of wisdom and the greed of the Vir- 
ginia trustees may be seen to this day in the 
short block between Jefferson and Green streets and 
the long block between Green and Walnut. The 
early survey provided that ''a slip of land begin- 
ning 180 feet from the south side of Green Street, 
from First to Twelfth," should be reserved from 
sale and kept for a public promenade and park, its 
original forest to be left standing as far as possible 
and its grounds to be kept in order by the town. 
General Clark no doubt foresaw the need for these 
breathing-places, for his map of the town shows all 
the ground between Main Street and the river from 
First to Twelfth streets marked "public"; it also 
shows two whole squares, where the courthouse is 
now standing, marked ''public." 

But the trustees sold this reserved area. It is 
told that they sold it to pay their whisky bill at 
the tavern. This is probably not true, but that the 
tradition exists is significant. Certainly they were 
much blamed for selling it and an effort was made 
to set the sale aside, but nothing ever came of it. 
When we to-day observe the number of people 



58 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

who now use and enjoy Lincoln Park, the tiny 
park by the side of the post-office, we may reaHze 
what such a sHp of land through the heart of the 
overcrowded city would mean to the masses of peo- 
ple, who can but rarely get out to the remote parks. 

When the Virginia trustees held their second 
meeting, on June 4, 1783, they found they had four 
vacant seats to fill in their board and a wonderful 
condition of affairs to untangle. This is how it 
came about: In 1783 John Campbell, now a colonel 
in the American army, escaped from his Canadian 
prison and came to Louisville to see about the lands 
that he and Doctor Connolly had held in partnership. 
He found a good-sized town built up on them; so he 
brought a suit at law to recover his property. His 
suit demanded a great deal of land that had never 
been his. He brought in old requisitions which he 
claimed he had against Connolly, and demanded 
that the trustees give him the money for them. The 
trustees resisted him, but Virginia set them aside and 
appointed commissioners in their stead for this suit. 

Campbell seems to have had some sort of power 
over the Virginia Legislature, for they unjustly 
passed act after act in his favor, and the laws were so 
interpreted that orders were given to sell the town 
lots on which men's homes were built and pay Camp- 
bell's claims, with interest. Nearly the whole of the 
town was sold to. pay the money Campbell claimed 
and the interest on the debt! After he had been 
paid, in money and town lots, more than four hundred 
and fifty English pounds, the Virginia Legislature 
passed another act which ordered the Virginia 



LOUISVILLE UNDER VIRGINIA RULERS 59 

commissioners to sell any unsold lots in Louisville 
and with the money pay Campbell a debt due him 
from Alexander McKee — a debt which had no relation 
whatever to any lands in Louisville. The end of 
the matter was the sale of the whole one thousand 
acres of land originally escheated and dedicated to 
Louisville, except the courthouse square and the old 
graveyard on Jefferson Street, the first public grave- 
yard in Louisville. 

This outrage and the consequent loss of property 
greatly crippled the little town, and, it would seem, 
should have forever discouraged its inhabitants. 
But the early Kentuckians were a people quick to 
think, brave to act, and full of enterprise. Close 
contact with Nature had prepared them for emer- 
gencies and had taught them wisdom, stripping away 
all trifles. With splendid resolve they rose above 
their officials, and things soon began to right them- 
selves. The town recovered from this setback much 
sooner than could one less favorably located. The 
big fo/ests almost within its borders provided wood 
for plows, for tools, ax-handles, wagons, furniture, 
houses, and for river craft of all kinds. The demand 
for these things was strong from the very first. The 
pioneer himself needed every sort of thing, and 
stations up and down the rivers gladly took all the 
surplus. In this way commerce began. 



CHAPTER X 

STEAMBOAT DAYS ON THE OHIO 

One of Louisville's earliest industries was boat 
building. Before the coming of steamboats, many 
keel-boats, barges, and flatboats were needed for 
passengers and for freight. The Ohio was the gate- 
way for the Northern fur trader. Louisville-built 
boats took downstream to New Orleans furs for the 
London market, flour for the West Indies, and lead, 
salt, cordage, and roots and herbs to stations along 
the lower Mississippi. They returned to Shippingport 
from New Orleans laden with sugar, coffee, and other 
merchandise. 

River traffic was slow traffic. A boat leaving 
New Orleans on, let us say, the first of March, rarely 
reached the Falls earlier than July; sometimes not 
until October. At present a barge goes to New Orleans 
in eight days and returns in sixteen. A fast passen- 
ger steamboat of the present time takes six days to go 
to New Orleans and eight to return. 

The way boats developed is very interesting. 
First came the Indian's canoe, made of birch bark, 
light, swift, easily carried overland from water to 
water. Next came the Frenchman's pirogue, a big 
tree chopped down and clumsily hollowed out and 
then burned to shape. It was slow-moving, but 
strong for carrying cargoes. Last, before steamboats, 
came the flatboat, called the ''Kentucky ark," built 

(60) 



STEAMBOAT DAYS ON THE OHIO 61 

to carry the pioneer himself, his family, their house- 
hold goods, and his livestock. This "Kentucky ark" 
could float with the current from Pittsburgh to New 
Orleans in seventy-five days. Men go around the 
world in less time now. 




THE DIZZY WHARF AND TYPES OF BOATS 

The river men of that period had happy, careless 
times as they floated down the stream in the southern 
sunshine; but they had their troubles, too. The 
rivers were infested with a lot of restless, adventurous 
fellows who owned their own boats and who lived 



62 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

by trickery and thievery — regular river pirates. 
They would follow a boatload of furs for miles, 
hallooing to the hands, swapping jokes with them or 
furnishing them with whisky. Sometimes the pirates 
would persuade the river men to tie up all the boats 
and have a good time on shore. While they were 
occupied in playing cards or in drinking, the boat- 
wreckers would have their ''pals" sneak off to the 
fur-laden boats to bore holes in their bottoms or to set 
them on fire. When the river men discovered their 
misfortune the wreckers would offer ready help in 
rescuing the goods. But instead of helping they 
would slip away with most of the goods and hide 
them until the men were off, when they could sell 
them without being found out. After steamboats 
came into use this low business was broken up. 

The first steamboat to come to Louisville was 
Robert Fulton's Orleans. As there were then no 
telegrams nor daily newspapers, nor daily mail to 
Louisville, few persons knew that there was such a 
thing in all the world as a boat run by steam. Ful- 
ton's were the first in the world. In fact almost 
nothing was known about steam. But late one fine 
October night, in 1811, after everybody had been in 
bed for hours, there fell upon the silence a shrill, 
unearthly scream. Such a sound had never before 
been heard in the wilderness. It seemed to come 
from the river. 

Everybody sprang out of bed and rushed to the 
river bank. What they saw was more fearsome 
than what they had heard; for there, coming to- 
ward the town, was a huge monster (or, you may 



STEAMBOAT DAYS ON THE OHIO 



63 



be sure, they thought it huge and a monster) full of 
yellow eyes, snorting down stream and rounding in 
to shore. The negroes thought the Judgment Day 
had come and fell on their knees in prayer. Others 
thought a comet had fallen into the water and was 
hissing and moving in the stream. It was a big 
sensation for everybody. 




FULTON'S STEAMBOAT 



The Orleans could not go over the Falls, nor could 
she be carried around them. So she was compelled 
to give up her intended trip to New Orleans until 
high water could float her over. She plied for weeks 
between Louisville and Cincinnati, and was a never- 
failing curiosity to every soul along the banks of 
the Ohio. It was December before a rise in the river 
allowed her to proceed on her southern trip. 

No steamboat that ever sailed the Western waters 
had such an experience as did the Orleans after she 
left Louisville for the Mississippi River. If she had 



64 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

frightened the townspeople by the Falls, she certainly 
had reason to know the terror of abject fright herself. 
At two o'clock in the morning of December i6, 1811, 
while the Orleans was in the vicinity of Fulton 
County, Kentucky, there came a great earthquake. 
The winter air was hot and sullen; the earth rocked 
to and fro; vast chasms opened on the shores, throwing 
out columns of sand and water with a hissing sound.. 
Every one crowded on deck in solemn silence and 
awe. As they looked they saw the shores of the river 
tremble. Great sections of bank, forest-clad, quivered 
a moment, then fell into the boiling waters. The 
earth quaked, opened, and within a tract of solid 
land there came into being a lake, twenty miles 
long, ten miles broad, in some places very shallow, 
in others from iifty to seventy feet deep — Reelfoot 
Lake, partly in Fulton County, Kentucky, and partly 
in the two neighboring counties in Tennessee. 

The writer of this book has often heard old people 
tell of this 1 811 earthquake as it occurred in Louis- 
ville. Shock followed shock; a dense black cloud 
overshadowed the city, through which no beam of 
sun penetrated to cheer the heart. The rumblings 
were like a constant discharge of artillery. They 
said that the stars seemed to fall out of the sky; 
that they saw the earth crack; that one gentleman, 
walking on Grayson Street with his little son, whose 
hand he held, heard the well-known rumble and 
jerked the little lad to his shoulder and ran with him 
just in time to save the boy's legs from a rift in the 
earth, which quaked, opened, and then closed again. 
Shocks continued every day from the sixteenth until 



STEAMBOAT DAYS ON THE OHIO 65 

the twenty-first day of December; then, at intervals, 
until February of 1812. 

The Orleans was a surprise to Louisville men. 
But they were quick to realize the possibilities of river 
traffic by means of steamboats, and they had at hand 
the very materials for making such boats. In a short 
while steamboat building became a leading activity 
around the Falls cities. The old coves for flatboats 
and keels, near Shippingport and Louisville, were 
quickly turned into yards for boat-building. In 181 8 
Louisville had made four of the fourteen steamboats 
built around the Falls. In 18 19 she built twelve of 
the twenty-three. Of the first forty-one steamboats 
on Western waters, seven were built around Louis- 
ville and twenty-four were owned by Kentuckians. 
By 1848 there, were twelve hundred steamboats on 
the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. 

Fulton's patent rights on his steamboats included 
the exclusive right to navigate the Western rivers. 
This did not please the people of the West nor of 
Louisville. So a Louisville man. Captain H. M. 
Shreve, put the matter to a test in the courts, and 
secured such a defining of the laws that not only 
Louisville-built, but all other steamboats, had liberty 
to go and come at will on Western rivers. 

At a dinner given to Captain Shreve in 181 7, in 
honor of his having made the ''very quick voyage" 
from Louisville to New Orleans and back in ''the 
brief period of forty-five days," he uttered the 
prophecy that the time might come when this voyage 
would be made in ten or twelve days. He was 
laughed at as an enthusiast, though he was 



66 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

complimented on ''the celerity and safety" of 
the trip. 

Steamboat building, steamboat furnishing and 
cordage, its manning, and loading and unloading 
made employment for quite an army of people in 
Louisville until 1836. When the railroads came, 
much of the energy and capital of the city, so long 
devoted to river commerce, was turned in other 
directions. 

Besides the shipyards there were large foundries 
and machine shops, where boat engines were made; 
and boiler works, and plants devoted to woodwork 
for interior finishing. Many of the skilled workmen 
were experts in their lines. The steamers built 
then were the finest that have ever been operated 
on Western waters. 

At one time (in 1870) there was a great race on 
the Mississippi River, from New Orleans to St. Louis, 
between two of the finest and fastest passenger boats 
that ran on Western waters — the steamers Natchez 
and Robert E. Lee. Thousands of dollars were 
wagered on the result. The contest grew so close 
that, on one of the boats, after the fuel began to give 
out, a large consignment of fat hams and shoulders 
was put into the furnace. The race was won by the 
Robert E. Lee, the trip being made in a little less 
than four days. This boat was built in New Albany, 
just across the river from Louisville. 



CHAPTER XI 

I.OUISVILLE A KENTUCKY TOWN UNDER 
KENTUCKY TRUSTEES 

As there were no fast mails in the early clays, it 
was the spring of 1783 before the people heard that 
Cornwallis had surrendered his army to General 
Washington, and that the last hope the English had 
held of subduing America and making the colonies 
return to British rule was taken from them. Word 
came to Kentucky that the colonists were to become 
a nation among nations, free and equal. Messengers 
on horseback brought the news, and at their heels 
came tidings of the treaty of 1783. 

Joy knew no bounds in the length and breadth of 
Kentucky, for with all her causes to be dissatisfied 
with Virginia's treatment, the Kentuckians were loyal 
to the heart's core. Many temptations had been 
offered them to sever connection with the other 
Americans and help build up a foreign government in 
the center of the new land. The British offered 
both General Clark and Colonel Floyd great sums 
of money and titles of nobihty if they would induce 
the Kentuckians to betray this country and ally 
Kentucky with England. Both Spain and England 
knew what such a barrier in the heart of the New 
World would mean to America's aims and growth. 
Kentucky held the key to the situation: but she held 
it loyally. All the time that the thirteen original 
colonies on the Atlantic coast were fighting against 

(67) 



68 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

England for personal and political liberty, the pioneers 
of Kentucky, shut in from that combat by a wall of 
mountains, were doing their full share toward the 
making of a nation — doing it by standing fast and 
true, as well as by conquering and retaining a region 
to the west of the Alleghanies far larger than all the 
thirteen States put together. 

The very interesting and instructive story of the 
separation of Kentucky from Virginia, and the moving 
causes which led up to it, form a great chapter in Ken- 
tucky history. But it belongs to Louisville's story 
only in that when it was accomplished Louisville was 
controlled by a Kentucky Legislature instead of by 
the Legislature of Virginia. It was in February, 1791, 
that the Congress of the United States passed a law 
to admit Kentucky as one of the States of the Union. 

Kentucky, though the first State to be ready in 
population and strength, the first to apply for ad- 
mission to the Union, and the first recommended to 
Congress for admission by President Washington, 
was the second State admitted, Vermont being 
the first. The act took effect June i, 1792. From 
that date Louisville became a Kentucky city, free 
from Virginia rule. 

Either by some oversight or some lack of wisdom 
it came about that after Louisville came to be under 
a Kentucky Legislature the old \'irginia trustees 
were continued in office for five years, doing prac- 
tically nothing for the town. Finally the Legislature 
passed an act by which the men of Louisville had 
the right to vote for trustees from among their own 
citizens: men who lived in the town, owned 



LOUISVILLE UNDER KENTUCKY TRUSTEEvS 69 

property in it, and were interested in its develop- 
ment. The Legislature also authorized a tax for 
city improvements. 

It seemed that at last intelligent attention was to 
be given to the little settlement at the Falls, which 
had so bravely weathered storms of neglect, of un- 
favorable legislation, and of misgovernment. From 
this time affairs in Louisville moved on, surely if 
slowly. Efforts were made toward cleaning up dirty 
and unwholesome places ; mud-holes were filled ; 
board walks were laid ; cross-streets were opened ; 
houses which had been built on the roads were 
moved back to line ; weeds which had grown so 
tall that fowls roosted in them were chopped down 
or rooted out. The place began to have the appear- 
ance of an orderly and well-appointed town instead 
of an overgrown frontier station. 

One of the first recorded acts of the new trustees 
was the improvement of ''Main street, from Major 
Harrison's to William Johnston's." This meant Main 
Street from Sixth to Third. It was 1812 before streets 
were regularly named. At that date Chestnut Street, 
being the southernmost limit of the town, was called 
South Street. Where Broadway now runs was Dun- 
kirk Road. Its earliest name as a street was Prather 
Street. Walnut Street got its name from a large 
grove of walnut trees which grew in the family burial- 
ground of Thomas Prather, on Walnut Street near 
Fourth. Magazine Street derived its name from a 
powder magazine which occupied part of the block 
between Eighth and Ninth streets on Chestnut, the 
lot running back to what is now Magazine Street. 



70 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

This lot now has on it the administration building of 
the Board of Education. St. Catherine Street had 
for its early name Churchill Street. Colonel S. B. 
Churchill owned at that time a large tract of land 
where he had his "town residence." St. Catherine 
was cut right through the middle of his grounds. 

Just when the trustees began to pave the streets 
and curb them is not recorded, but it was probably 
about 1811. Main Street was the first to be put in 
order. Others were improved as the number of their 
residents increased. No attempt was made to drain 
the ponds until the townspeople got a good scare 
when so many died during the epidemic of 1822. 
After that there was a great cleaning up, and a 
Board of Health was appointed. There had been a 
scourge of smallpox in 181 7, and Doctor McMurtrie, 
in his History of Louisville, had predicted that there 
would soon be some great illness because of the 
ponds, dirt, and general want of sanitation. During 
the smallpox scare a large hemp factory was hastily 
fitted up for a hospital, so that the diseased people 
would be isolated from the well ones. It was at 
this date that Cuthbert Bullitt gave three acres of 
land and Thomas Prather five acres, for a public 
hospital. This was the forerunner of the present 
splendid hospital on Chestnut Street. It is a matter 
for great regret that the whole eight acres was not 
reserved for hospital purposes. 

While the 1822 epidemic was still raging, the Ken- 
tucky trustees, now thoroughly frightened, began to 
realize that the ponds were really only disease-breeders 
and must be made away with. Such a cleaning up 



LOUISVILLE UNDER KENTUCKY TRUSTEES 71 

and sanitation as was at once begun has never been 
needed since. From then until now the city of Louis- 
ville, long known as ''the graveyard of the West," has 
been notably healthful, full of sunshine and air, and 
thoroughly drained. 

The first Sunday law of the city was enacted under 
authority of the Kentucky trustees. It declared that 
all labor and traffic must cease on the Sabbath day. 
Boats might put off freight and go on their way; but 
stores, factories, music-halls, and all such places must 
clor? up on Sunday. The convention which passed 
this good Puritanic law passed also an act "to pre- 
serve the breed of horses." They were Kentuckians, 
after all. There were other transactions of the Ken- 
tucky trustees which are of interest. A few of these 
are listed in another chapter of this book, under the 
heading "Some Earliest Things in Louisville." 

The last act of the Kentucky trustees will bring a 
smile to our lips. At the very end of their term of 
office, on the 15th day of February, 1828, they made 
a law offering one cent each for the scalp of every rat 
with its ears on, killed within the town limits. Big 
Norway rats had come into the United States in for- 
eign vessels about the year 1775. New Orleans boats 
brought them into Louisville in such numbers as to 
threaten much valuable property. Besides this, the 
physicians of the town thought the Norway rats were 
disease-carriers and should be exterminated. One 
man, owner of a tavern on the river at Fourth Street, 
poisoned, trapped, or otherwise killed one hundred 
and sixty rats in one night. He got one dollar and 
sixty cents for them the next day from the city 



72 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLR 

authorities. The Norway rats completely and forever 
drove away the little blue rats which were Louis- 
ville's first rat inhabitants. 

Here follow the names of Louisville's first Ken- 
tucky trustees; they were elected in May, 1797, and 
held their first session June 5th of that year: 

Archibald Armstrong, Evan Williams, 

Gabriel J. Johnston, Reuben Eastin, 

John Eastin, Henry Duncan, 

Richard Prather, 
Worden Pope, Clerk. 

Louisville should honor her Kentucky trustees.. 
They served her from the year 1795 until the city got 
its first charter, in 1828. They gave of their time and 
energy to the public welfare, w^ithout other reward 
than the joy of seeing the town progress to power and 
wealth; and they wrought under conditions which 
might well have disheartened men less courageous and 
loyal. When they undertook the city's affairs they 
found nothing organized. What need there was for 
organization may be inferred from reading some of 
the earliest laws the trustees passed. They declared 
that hog-pens, dead animals, stable manure, kitchen- 
wash, and shavings must be removed from the streets. 
They made Evan Williams desist from running the 
slop from his distillery into the public streets. They 
arranged for the erection of a public market-house in 
the center of ''the first street south of Main." Thus 
Market Street got its name, and for many years its 
main employment. The trustees now began in earnest 
to drain the ponds. A good many were turned into 
wells. One, however, could not be gotten rid of in 



LOUISVILLE UNDER KENTUCKY TRUSTEES 73 

that way. It extended from Fifth to Fifteenth 
streets, following the line of the present alley between 
Jefferson and Market, and it was deep enough for 
horses to swim in. This was later drained by a ditch 
down Twelfth Street to the river. 

Pages could be written of the improvements that 
were made under the Kentucky trustees. By 1828 
the town had arrived at an importance of its own, 
and was adorned with buildings that would have 
graced New York or Philadelphia. Population had 
increased to 7,063— nearly double what it was in 
1 82 1 — and a committee was appointed looking to- 
ward a ''larger Louisville" by asking the coopera- 
tion of Portland and Shippingport in the passage 
of an act by the Legislature to incorporate Louisville. 

Under the Kentucky trustees the area of the town 
was widened from its original limits. A new survey 
put the limits thus: ''Beginning at the stone bridge 
over Bear Grass Creek, near Geiger's mills, thence on 
a straight line to the upper corner of Jacob Geiger's 
land on the Ohio river, and thence by a straight line 
down the Ohio, so as to include Corn Island and the 
quarry adjacent thereto, and thence to the upper 
boundary of Shippingport to the back line thereof," 
etc. It is not very intelligible to us now. 

When at last the Kentucky trustees turned the 
town over to its new form of government, with a mayor 
and a city council, it had a courthouse, jail, schools, 
churches, hospital, foundries, post-office, engine house, 
market houses, theater, and other buildings. The 
straggling log homes were fast disappearing and had 
been largely replaced by brick or stone houses, two 



74 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

Stories high and with attractive flower-beds and shrub- 
bery. A new style of architecture had come, dis- 
placing the old. One of its early types yet remains 
on Sixth Street near Walnut. It was long known as 
the "Grayson house." In its day it was considered 
a palace, and it was perfectly kept. The Graysons 
were a family of the highest social distinction. When 
Mrs. Grayson sold a part of her large apple orchard 
to the city, the street built through it was named in 
her honor — Grayson Street. 

Four years after the trustees took office, Congress 
made Louisville a port of entry and established a col- 
lector of customs here. 

Such were our forefathers. Some of them were 
educated gentlemen from France, England, Ireland, 
and Germany. Some came to these Western wilds 
from pure love of travel; some were exiles from their 
own country; some, like Colonel Clark, were true 
patriots who offered as a sacrifice their quiet homes 
in more prosperous regions to help maintain liberty 
in the land; some were ''simple, rude, perhaps un- 
couth, men and women, who followed the trail of the 
buffalo until civilization overtook them. After their 
noiseless moccasins came the heavy tramp of busy 
thousands," and the song of wild birds was succeeded 
by the hoof-beats of mules and horses and the per- 
petual roar of commercial industry. 

The making of Louisville has not been the work of 
a single people, nor of a people of a single creed or race. 
Into its melting-pot there came men and women of 
many motives and many beliefs, diverse races with 
diverse ideals and manners. How they have fused, 




THE GRAYSON HOME 



76 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

here as elsewhere, is one of the marvels of the 
American Republic. The progress of Louisville has 
been, in the main, the progress of a single high 
ideal. He who would understand the spirit of 
to-day must reach a clear idea of the conditions 
under which the pioneers lived and wrought. They 
dug deep in the heavy soil, toiled and moiled with 
spade and trowel and laid solid foundation-stoneS^ — 
rough and inartistic, perhaps, and hew^n with rude 
tools. But they set them square and level, and 
on them it behooves us to build fearlessly a 
superstructure that will reach far toward the stars. 
Under the gnarled brown hands of the pioneers of 
Louisville, order and beauty grew out of confusion. 
It is ours to see to it -that spiritual harmony be 
wrought out of the discord of our composite and 
tumultuous population. It is a man's task! 



A STYLISH PIONEER HOME 



CHAPTER XII 

SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 

We have now taken a bird's-eye view of the be- 
ginnings of Louisville, We have told how the land 
was explored, surveyed, inhabited, and then estab- 
lished as a town by law. We have traced the homely 
little village at the Falls until it was ready to be turned 
over by the town trustees to a form of government 
which called for a mayor and a city council. While 
Louisville is adjusting herself to her new mode of 
political life, let us go back and note some of the 
earliest things in the pioneer settlement. 

The earliest homes were built of logs. Sometimes 
these were round logs, just as they were chopped from 
the woods; oftener they were logs that were rudely 
squared on one side and fitted into each other at the 
ends. Roofs were not shingled or tinned or tiled, as 
we have them now. They were made of wide boards 
and pinned on to the house with wooden pins. John 
Campbell's tobacco warehouse had on it the first 
shingle roof in the town. 

Mr. F. A. Kaye built the first brick house in 
Louisville, in 1789. No one here had ever seen bricks 
put into a house before, and half the town took a day 
off and watched the masons as they laid the bricks in 
the wall. It was on Market Street, near Fifth. When 
this old house was torn down many of its bricks 
were carried away by relic-hunters as souvenirs. 

(77) 



78 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

There was a large rock quarry in the river, above 
Corn Island. From this the earliest rock house was 
built, in 1 79 1. It was an attractive one-story square 
building, with a turret and an observatory, and was 
on the corner of Main and Eighth streets. 
The owner called it a fort. He was very proud 
of his home. 

A wealthy Mississippi planter, Ben Smith, who 
made Kentucky his summer home, built the first stone 
mansion. It is still standing, on Jefferson Street be- 
tween Brook and First, and is now used by the Union 
Gospel Mission. One may yet note the handsome 
spiral stairway, the massive hardwood doors, the fine 
hardware, and the big rooms. Where Southern 
beaux and belles used to dance and flirt, one now 
nightly hears the tender appeal of holy men and 
women for better and purer lives. John Gwathmey, 
the architect of this house, was also architect of 
the courthouse. 

The earliest really beautiful residence in Louisville 
was built by our first postmaster, Michael Lacassaque. 
Its beauty was increased by a lovely garden full of 
rare plants and flowers, and by window-boxes with 
their hanging drapery of ferns and climbing plants. 
These and other early well-kept homes created for 
Louisville an ideal which, never retreating, finds ex- 
pression in the present age in countless beautiful and 
elegant homes such as we have pictured here. Our 
city well deserves the title bestowed upon it by appre- 
ciative guests — "the City of Homes." Its fame for 
the elegance of its residences and the hospitality of its 
citizens is nation-wide. 



SOME PRESENT-DAY LOUISVILLE HOMES 




80 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

The first white child born on Corn Island was 
Isaac Kimbly, whose father and mother came over 
with General Clark and the families when the island 
was settled. He was born early in 1779. The first 
Louisville-born child to live and grow to manhood was 
Thomas Joyes, born December 9, 1787. His de- 
scendants still live among us, and are prominent in 
Louisville's social and political life. 

We have told that corn was already found on the 
island and was the first crop of our ancestors. A patch 
of wheat was sown near the stockade in the ravine 
when the settlers came to the mainland. Fear of 
Indian raids kept people from doing much farming, 
and this wheat was carefully watched and tended. 
When the crop was ready it was cut down with knives 
and husked by rubbing the grains between the hands. 
The grains were ground in a hand mill and sifted 
through a gauze neckerchief that some one owned. 
Then it was made up into bread, shortened with rac- 
coon fat. It was baked over red coals, and everybody 
in the station was invited to feast off it. We may be 
sure they were glad to get wheaten bread, even if it 
was shortened with ''coon fat." 

Daniel Brodhead was the man who opened the first 
store in Louisville. In 1783 he went on horseback to 
Philadelphia, about eight hundred miles distant, and 
bought a stock of such goods as would be needed in a 
frontier town. He had them "wagoned" across the 
mountains and then floated down the river in a flat- 
boat. After this he went to New Orleans, which was 
then a Spanish possession, and bought for the men and 
women of Louisville their first finery — calico and 



SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 81 

jewelry and combs for the belles and wool hats, ban- 
danna handkerchiefs, and clothing for the men. Be- 
fore this store was opened, the citizens had for 
wear only such things as they themselves could 
manufacture in the settlement — linsey-woolsey for 
dresses, coonskin caps and deerskin or bearskin gar- 
ments for the men. After the store was s.et up, 
Louisville was famed all over the lower valley as the 
only hamlet that had a store. By 1788 there were 
a goodly number of houses and people here, and 
Mr. Brodhead got rich off his venture. 

The first silver money used in Louisville to any 
extent came in exchange for goods sent in keel-boats 
to the cities along the Mississippi River. Louisville 
and Kentucky had a good trade in pelts, or skins of 
deer, bears, beavers, otters, wolves, and other wild 
animals. Until silver money came into use, goods and 
products were bought and sold entirely by exchange 
or barter. Shut up as the Kentuckians were at first 
from the outside world, they learned to grow or to 
make everything they had use for. Food was to be 
had for the taking, so plentiful were game and fish. 
Corn grew almost of itself in the virgin soil; hemp, 
nettles, and flax furnished linen and clothing; sugar 
burst out of maple trees; and Kentucky was the 
great salt center of the South. The few things that 
were needed from beyond their own bounds the Ken- 
tuckians easily secured by exchange. But after a 
while a need for small coin began to be felt, and 
the townspeople met it by simply cutting the 
Spanish silver dollars that came up from the South 
into halves, quarters, and eighths. "Two bits" made 



82 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

a quarter. This cut coin was used in Kentucky 
long after the government mints began to supply 
small currency. Even to-day there are places 
in Kentucky where a quarter is spoken of as 
"two bits." 

Up to 1784 Louisville's chief trade with the out- 
side world was in furs and horses. The goods were 
sent either to Alexandria, in Virginia, or to Philadel- 
phia. In either case they were taken on pack-horses 
over the Wilderness Road and across the mountains. 
At the end of the journey the horses were generally 
sold, as well as the goods. No road was safe from 
Indians, so the frontiersmen would agree to meet at 
Crab Orchard, and would set out from there in com- 
panies. Sometimes there would be a hundred pack- 
horses laden with pelts. The men who conducted 
these caravans were armed with guns and carried 
powder and bullet pouches. At that time it was safer 
and easier for a Kentucky planter to ship his products 
to Philadelphia by way of New Orleans than by way 
of Pittsburgh. 

It was in 1795 that the earliest tax was imposed 
for public purposes. It was limited to $116.66. 
Prior to that, if the town trustees needed money 
for town improvements it had to come from their 
own pockets or from personal gifts. 

The quick growth of the town and its large ship- 
ping interests soon called for rope and bagging. 
In 1820, Patrick McFarland and Benjamin Dunn, 
brothers-in-law, operated the first ''rope-walk." 
They bought a tract of land running from Market 
to Walnut streets and from Sixth to Twelfth. On 



SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 83 

part of this they built a long, narrow wooden house, 
"with its port-holes all a-row," and made rope and 
bagging in it for many years. Mr. McFarland's 
daughter married Samuel Casseday, and to this 
couple was born the second historian of Louisville, 
Ben Casseday. Doctor McMurtrie was Louisville's 
first historian. Another historian of Kentucky was 
an offspring from that wedding — Robert McNutt 
McElroy, author of ''Kentucky in the Nation's 
History." He is a grandson of Mr. Casseday. 

Louisville did not have a policeman before 1810, 
and then they were not called policemen, but "watch- 
men." Every hour of the night these watchmen 
cried what hour it was. They would call, "Two 
o'clock, and all's well!" or whatever hour it might 
be. If there was great news, they would call that. 
For example, when the British surrendered at York- 
town to General Washington, fast riders hurried to 
all the towns and stations, shouting the glad tidings. 
Philadelphia, like Louisville, had a night watchman, 
and he was the first man to hear the news as it came 
to that town, which was then the capital. Off he 
rushed through the sleeping streets, calling, "Past 
two o'clock and Cornwallis has surrendered! Corn- 
wallis has surrendered!" Out from their beds and 
forth from their doors sprang every inhabitant, and 
there was no more sleep that night. The doorkeeper 
of Congress died of joy. 

The earliest schools in Louisville were neither pub- 
lic nor free, although as early as February, 1798, 
while Louisville was yet a Virginia possession, Thomas 
Jefferson induced the Virginia Legislature to make 



84 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

extensive grants of lands to Kentucky County for 
educational purposes. The share of these received by 
Louisville was six thousand acres. Trustees were ap- 
pointed to attend to the matter of the school, which 
was named Jefferson Seminary after Thomas Jeffer- 
son. It was a grand property, but the trustees did 
nothing but disagree among themselves, and it was 
really 1813 before they bought land from Colonel 
Richard C. Anderson, on Eighth Street between Green 
and Walnut, and built a brick schoolhouse on it. The 
house was sixty feet long and twenty feet wide, one 
and a half stories high, and had two big rooms on the 
ground floor and four rooms in the half-story. This 
school was opened in 1816 with Mann Butler as prin- 
cipal, at a salary of five hundred dollars a year. Then, 
although it was a State school and public, it was not 
free, for a fee of twenty dollars for six months' tuition 
was charged. This seminary struggled on poorly 
enough until it became the Louisville College, and 
finally became the basis for the present Male 
High School. 

The makers of Louisville did not, however, wait 
for free schools for their children, nor for public 
moneys to establish them. Very early in the town's 
life there were excellent private schools all through 
the city, taught mostly by French and Irish gentle- 
men of learning who were exiled from their own 
countries and were glad to find such pleasant occu- 
pation as teaching in the new land. The earliest 
of these private schools was opened at Market and 
Twelfth streets, in 1783. It was taught by Mr. 
George Leech, an English gentleman. Another was 



SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOULSVILLE 85 

on the corner of Seventh and Market streets, taught 
by Mr. Dickenson. One on Market Street between 
Fourth and Fifth was taught by an Episcopal min- 
ister, the Reverend Mr. Todd. There were many 
other such schools here. The usual fee was two 
dollars and a half a quarter. Out of these little log 
schoolhouses, shutterless, comfortless, with board 
roofs and puncheon floors, trooped the Kentucky 
boys of the period — boys who were to make Louis- 
ville and Kentucky famous in the annals of law, 
politics, religion, and literature. 

The schoolboys of those early days were not very 
different from the schoolboys of to-day. In 1807 a 
man came along with an elephant. It was the first 
elephant that was ever brought to America, and the 
man was showing it in all the cities and towns of the 
United States. The schoolboys begged a holiday that 
they might go to see it. The trustees needed money 
for the fire companies, so they charged the man ten 
dollars for every exhibition of his elephant; with the 
money that came in this way they bought ladders for 
use at fires. 

The fires which occurred within the limits of Louis- 
ville and its suburbs were at first put out by what was 
known as the ''Bucket Brigade." When a fire was 
seen, the man who first noticed it ran as fast as he 
could through the streets and yelled ''Fire! Fire!" 
with all his might and main. Then the men of the 
town flocked out on the streets and learned as best 
they could where the fire was burning. The first man 
to reach it took his stand next the burning house, and 
the next man stood a foot or so in a line from him to- 



86 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

ward the nearest well or pond. They had no fire- 
cisterns in those days. The town owned a lot of 
buckets, and the man nearest the well or pond filled 
the buckets as fast as he could and passed them on to 
the man next to him. From hand to hand they were 
rushed until they reached the men close to the fire, 
who poured their contents on the burning building. 
They were returned down a second line of men. There 
was never an empty hand after the first bucket was 
filled. In 1 8x2 house-owners were compelled by law 
to supply two fire-buckets for each house renting at 
forty dollars a year or over. The Bucket Brigade was 
organized as early as 1798-9. 

We are not sure just when hand-engines for 
extinguishing fires came into use in Louisville. 
We know that in 1820 the trustees ordered Thomas 
Prather, Peter B. Ormsby, and Cuthbert Bullitt to 
purchase five hand-engines. After that things got to 
be a little better when a fire occurred. Not so very 
much better, however, for as there were no fire- 
cisterns the engines had to be filled by buckets. 
But the bowls of the engines were always kept full 
when not in use, and so they were partly ready when 
they reached the burning building. Each engine 
had its company of firemen, and these firemen were 
the wealthy and prominent men of the city as well 
as the laboring men. No one was paid. Indeed, 
if any man was absent while a fire was burning he 
had a fine to pay. The fines went to. keep up the 
engines and engine-houses. The writer's mother 
was once present at an evening party when a fire 
cry was sounded. Instantly the music stopped, 



SOME EARLlEvST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 87 

and every man in the parlors disappeared. In a 
few moments they reappeared on the street, in full 
evening dress, tugging at one or other of the ropes 
of the engines. 

It may not be generally known, but the successors 
in direct line of that early ''Volunteer Firemen's 
Association" still exist, and have their headquarters 




AN EARLY FIRE ENGINE 



at the old engine-house on First Street near Green. 
They are now known as the "Veteran Volunteer 
Firemen's Association," and Mr. George Looms is 
president. The youngest man on the rolls is over 
seventy years old. One of the early engines was 
rescued from a junk-pile in Jeffersonville and Mr. 
Looms had it put in first-class order, exactly repro- 
ducing the old engine. It was last used when Theo- 
dore Roosevelt visited Louisville. The old firemen, 
filled with pride in their engine, marched with the 



SR THK MAKING OK LOUIvSVILLE 

other fire companies and threw from the nozzle of 
their beloved machine a stream of water eighty 
feet high. 

The earliest theater in Louisville came three years 
before the first church was built, though not so early 
as the first sermon was preached here. The honor 
of the first ministration of religion to the little settle- 
ment on the island belongs to the Episcopal Church. 
The Reverend Ichabod Camp, whose parish in Virginia 
had been decimated by the Revolutionary War, 
came with Colonel Clark and the soldiers in 1778 and 
preached the first sermon ever heard at the Falls of 
the Ohio. His text was, "If I take the wings of 
the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the 
sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy 
right hand shall hold me" — the inspired words of the 
Psalmist. It is told that it was a most inspiriting 
and comforting sermon. Mr. Camp moved on with 
missionary intent, but he left his hearers something 
they never parted with. 

The earliest theater was erected in 1808. Doctor 
McMurtrie tells us that it was but ''little better than 
a barn." But in 1818 it came into the hands of a 
noted actor of the time, Mr. Samuel Drake, who 
''established in Louisville the golden era of the drama 
in the West." The building was on the north side 
of Jefferson, between Third and Fourth streets. 
It burned down in 1843. The Drake family was 
very distinguished. Samuel, the father, and his 
two sons, Samuel and Alexander, and his daughter 
Julia, were star actors of their day, while another 
son was a poet. Alexander Drake married Frances 



90 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

Ann Denny, who had rare gifts as an actress and 
who acquired a national reputation. John Howard 
Payne and Washington Irving were correspondents 
of hers, and some of their letters to her are still 
preserved. She died in 1875, aged seventy-eight. 
Julia Drake became the mother of William Fosdick, 
a Kentucky poet, and of Julia Dean, one of the 
most beautiful and classic-faced women that ever 
graced the stage. A lovely small marble bust of 
Julia Dean is yet in Louisville, given by her to 
Ben Casseday, the historian, and now in possession 
of the writer. A noted favorite on Mr. Drake's 
stage was Mr. Caldwell, w^hose handsome son mar- 
ried a Louisville girl, Miss Eliza Breckinridge. 
From that union came the Misses Caldwell 
(Gwendolin and Mary Elizabeth), whose early 
property-holdings in Louisville made them very 
wealthy. Saints Mary and Elizabeth Hospital is 
named for their mother, in whose m.emory the 
building was erected by the Misses Caldwell. 

The religious sect first to have an organization in 
Louisville, though not by any means the first to have 
a church building, was the Baptist, which held serv- 
ices in the forts. A Baptist organization came to 
Louisville in a body, ''singing its way into the hearts 
of the pioneers, preaching its way into their minds, 
and praying its way into their souls, preserving, 
through a wilderness of over five hundred miles, 
church government and Christian discipline." 

The first denomination to build a church here was 
the Roman Catholic. In 1811 a chapel was built 
with funds contributed by citizens generally, but 



SOME EARUEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 91 

largely by money contributed by French Catholics 
living here. They were cultured men and women 
whom the misfortunes of France had led to take up 
a new life in the new country. This chapel was on 
the corner of Main and Tenth streets. 

The first Methodist church, built also by public 
subscription and open to all denominations, was 
erected in 1 812. It was originally on Market Street 
between Seventh and Eighth, but the building soon 
grew too small for the congregations who came crowd- 
ing in, so it was sold to Patrick McFarland and another 
church w^as put up on the corner of the alley on 
Fourth Street between Market and Jefferson. The 
body now worshiping at Sixth and Broadway is, we 
believe, the "direct apostolic successor" of that 
congregation. 

There is a tradition, not very well founded, that 
in 1803 there was a log church building close to the 
old Twelfth Street fort. This was eight years before 
the Roman Catholic chapel was built in 1811. It 
is not definitely known what denomination controlled 
it, claims being made both for the Episcopal and the 
Methodist. According to the tradition, the father 
of Bishop Kavanaugh was in charge. 

The first Episcopal church to be erected in Louis- 
ville is now known as Christ Church Cathedral. 
Its inception was entirely a lay movement. On May 
31, 1822, a public meeting was held in Washington 
Hall (predecessor of the present Gait House), when it 
was "resolved to open books of subscription for 
building a Protestant Episcopal church . . . 
under the direction of Peter B. Ormsby, Dennis 



02 THE MAKING OF LOUIvSVILLE 

Fitzhugh, Samuel Churchill, James Hughes, W. L. 
Thompson, Richard Barnes, and W. A. Atkinson." 
Mr. Ormsby, who proposed the erection of the church, 
donated the land upon which to build it. He owned 
a fiv^e-acre lot on Second Street near Green, and he 
told the wardens to fence off as much as might be 
desired and he would make a deed for the amount. 
But the senior warden delayed this important matter 
until, by a financial revolution, the whole of Mr. 
Ormsby's estate passed into other hands. When the 
deed came to be executed all that could be secured to 
the church was the portion now occupied by the main 
building. Its early form can not be recognized in 
the stone structure which now occupies the lot. 
The Parish House and office buildings were added 
in 1912. The church was originally a square house 
with its windows arranged in two stories. It is, we 
believe, the only Protestant church whose site of 
that date is still used as its church home. 

The first Presbyterian church was erected on 
Fourth Street between Market and Jefferson, directly 
opposite the Methodist, on the alley where a drug 
store now stands. It was organized in 181 5 with 
sixteen membsrs, four of them belonging to the 
McFarland family. This church, built in 1816, was 
of brick, having a tower and a bell. This bell was 
singularly sweet-toned, and was the delight not only 
of the Presbyterians but of the whole town. It hung 
high in its belfry, and was the bell used at ten o'clock 
every night to warn all negroes that the time had 
come for them to be at home. No slave was allowed 
to be out after ten o'clock without a permit from his 



SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 03 

master. The writer has made out dozens of such 
permits for her father's slaves. They ran somewhat 
thus: ''Permit Dolly Houston, slave of Samuel 
Casseday, to pass and repass until one o'clock to- 
morrow morning. (Signed and dated.)" The ten 
o'clock bell for slaves was the origin of a bell 
which was rung in Louisville every night at ten 
o'clock for many years after all slaves were freed. 
This bell set a standard of time in Louisville, and 
watches were regulated by it. 

The Presbyterian church took fire one Sunday 
during evening service. It was soon emptied, and it 
was seen that the old building was doomed. No one 
left the grounds, but all eyes turned toward the silver- 
throated bell which had so often rung for weddings 
and funerals, for slave calls and gatherings, in the 
twenty years. Nathan Hale was the sexton, and 
he stood at his post, clanging out the loud alarm of the 
bell for more assistants. A thousand forms faced 
the gray, square turret as the flames crept closer and 
closer to the belfry. Not a voice broke the stillness 
of the night, except now and then the sob of some 
church woman. The heat finally drove Hale from 
his post. For a while the leaping fires sent the brazen 
tongue on in a frenzy; then the wheel on which it 
hung was wrapped in flames, and as spoke after 
spoke dropped away the old bell tolled its own 
death-knell, slower and slower, until, with the last 
stroke of its hammer, dome, tower, and bell came 
crashing to the earth amid a million sparks. The 
women turned away weeping, and the men went 
silently back to their combat with the red embers. 



94 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

The bell was taken from the ruins the next day and 
carried away by relic-hunters. 

Louisville's first and probably its only giant was 
"Jim" Porter. He was brought to the town as a 
baby in his mother's arms, in 1811. He was small 
until he was seventeen years old. Then he took a 
sudden shoot upward until he gained a height of 
seven feet and nine inches. When as a lad he first 
went to work it was in a cooper shop, but he soon 
grew too tall to bend over in that trade and had to 
give it up. After that he drove a hack awhile and 
then became a saloonkeeper. When Charles Dickens 
came to Louisville, in 1842, he went to see Jim Porter, 
and was greatly amused at Jim's account of his own 
growth. He told Dickens that while he was shooting 
up into the air his mother had to sew a foot to his 
trouser-legs every night. Porter's cane was four and 
a half feet high and his rifle was eight feet long. It 
must have been a queer sight to see that immensely 
tall man sitting on the driver's box, even though 
the carriages of that period were much larger than 
any we have now. 

Streets were first named in Louisville in 18 12. 
Earlier than that they were known by the name of 
people residing on them or by some well-known object 
near them, as "the big elm," "Colonel Anderson's," 
etc. The first cross-streets to be cut through from 
the river to the city limits were East, Center, and 
West. 

The first iron foundry was owned and operated by 
Paul Skidmore, in 181 2. He employed no man who 
drank whisky or who was worthless in any way. His 



SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 95 

shop WEvS a success from the very first — steamboating, 
among other industries, creating a demand for his 
goods. The many foundries in Louisville at the 
present time make the city one of the foremost pig- 
iron consumers of the United States. 

It was many years after the town was established 
before Louisville had its first market-house. In 
earliest times the farmers brought their truck to 
town in wagons and sold it from door to door. 
Besides green foods, they brought in wild birds and 
deer which they had shot in the woods. Where the 
George Rogers Clark schoolhouse now stands, in 
Crescent Hill, was at that period dense woods, full 
of deer, foxes, bears, and other wild animals. 

The first public market-houses were built right 
in the middle of the street. One of them ran from 
Fourth to Fifth streets. There was a wide, clear, 
paved space at each end, and on this space the fish- 
dealers sold fish. Each year on New Year's Day 
the spaces were rented to slave-owners who had 
slaves to sell or to rent out for the coming year. 
An oak stump was used as a display block or auction 
block, and often slaves were put up on this block so 
that the would-be employer might see them over 
the heads of the large crowd which was sure to gather. 

The writer remembers one sad New Year's Day, 
on which she was permitted to go to market with her 
father. It was then the custom for the father of the 
family to do the marketing, followed by a slave to 
carry home the purchases in a market-basket. On 
coming near the market-house on this particular day 
the little girl saw a sight never to be forgotten. On 



96 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

the auction block stood a gigantic slave — brawny, 
coppery, with naked muscular chest and arms bared 
to view. He was exposed for sale to the highest 
bidder. The auctioneer cried out his skill and his 
faults. He said that the man was a wonder for work, 
and he pointed to his muscles; said that he had a 
fierce temper, hated white folks, and was very hard 
to manage; that he could keep up work for twenty- 
four hours if necessary. The little girl gazed with 
awed wonder and tender pity upon the sinewy giant 
standing in sullen silence on the auction block. 
Then she burst into tears — a flood of tears which 
neither candy nor toys could check. To this day 
she hopes the negro saw the loving pity in her little 
face and was soothed by it. She is glad to tell that 
her father freed every one of his slaves long before 
Mr. Lincoln became President of the United States 
and abolished slavery by his "Proclamation." 

Banking in Louisville in early days was not con- 
ducted through regular banking houses, but by 
certificates of deposit, inspectors' receipts for furs, 
tobacco, hemp, whisky, salt, etc. The late Colonel 
R. T. Durrett owned a very interesting specimen of 
one of these. After the flood in 1780 John Sanders, 
who was a famous hunter and trapper, found on the 
corner of Main and Third streets a big flatboat which 
had been left high and dry by the falling waters. 
No one knew to whom it had belonged, but Sanders 
got permission from the trustees to use it as a store- 
house for the hides and goods which were brought to 
him to sell on commission. Here he stored bales of 
yellow elk, brown buffalo, black bear, and gray deer 



SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 97 

skins. On these, and on other vakiable little parcels 
of furs which had been floated down the rivers and 
lakes from the north country, he issued certificates 
of deposit. These told the number of the package 
and its contents, adding a promise to pay when it 
should be sold, less charges for sale and storage. 
In 1784 such a certificate was made out to Daniel 
Boone for six beaver skins. Boone transferred it to 
Mr. Brodhead and from there it finally reached the 
hands of Colonel Durrett, who valued it both for 
its autographs and as a sample of the earliest banking 
methods of Louisville. 

Pioneer Louisville, as we have told, had no banks. 
Early in 1800 there was an unsuccessful private bank- 
known as the Bank of Louisville. In 1812 this bank 
united with a new corporation which was a branch 
of the Bank of Kentucky, that was then stationed 
at Lexington. This union was not, however, a 
success, and one day the directors said they would 
stop payment. Then up rose Mr. Prather, the 
president, and said, ''Gentlemen, if such is your 
intent, I resign here and now my oflice and my 
salary. I can preside over no institution which fails 
to meet its obligations promptly and to the letter." 

The first Presbyterian church, the first public 
library, and the first whisky distillery were organized 
in the same year, 18 16. The church and the library 
are still in existence. The distillery is dead, though 
it had the advantage of owning $100,000 in money 
and one hundred acres of land. The books of the 
library, numbering in 18 19 five hundred volumes, 
were bequeathed to the Kentucky Historical Society. 



98 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

This society passed out of existence in 1842, leav- 
ing all the books it owned to the Mercantile Asso- 
ciation. The Mercantile Association, passing away 
in 1847, gave the books to the new Louisville 
Library. In 1854 this lot of books was transferred 
to the Kentucky Mechanics' Institute. The next 
organization to fall heir to them was the Young 
Men's Christian Association, in 1867. The Louisville 
Public Library claimed them in 1870. The Poly- 
technic Society displaced this library and received 
the books in 1873. The Polytechnic merged with 
the Louisville Free Public Library in 191 2, and the 
original books of the first library are now shelved 
in that building. Their greatest interest by this 
time, after passing through so many hands and be- 
ing duly ''culled," is probably in the numerous tags 
adorning them. 

The first court of Jefferson County was not held 
in a courthouse, but in the fort in the ravine. It 
was not thought safe to be very far from the protec- 
tion of the guns of the forts in those days, so early 
courts wandered from fort to fort. In 1782 land was 
granted to Louisville for a county courthouse, and 
the trustees put up a log building of one and a half 
stories in height, with a board roof and a puncheon 
floor. It cost $309.79. It burned within three 
years, and a large part of the city's early records 
were burned up with it. 

The county court of 1787 next authorized Richard 
Taylor — father of Zachary Taylor, who was later 
President of the United States— and Richard Eastin 
to contract for a second courthouse, to be ready by 



SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 99 

August. It is probable that it was never built, for 
there is no record of it and it is recorded that on 
March 7, 1788, Richard Eastin, Alexander Breckin- 
ridge, and Ben Johnston were appointed by the 
court to prepare a plan for a courthouse of stone or 
brick, to be let to some contractor who would get 
his pay ''in salt, corn, pork, tobacco, beef, livestock, 
flour, or any kind of country produce." vSome con- 
tractor must have accepted this queer pay, for the 
records tell of a pretty building with square walls, 
little windows, and a spire. This was used until 
1 8x1, not only for a courthouse but also for a town 
hall and for religious gatherings. 

In 18 II a new courthouse was planned by John 
Gwathmey. It was a very handsome building for 
its day. It stood in the center of a large area now 
bounded by Market, Jefferson, Fifth, and Seventh. 
It was in the second story of this courthouse that our 
first public library was placed. You can see from 
the picture of this 181 1 courthouse that it was very 
attractive. The grounds around it were eight of 
the half-acre lots. This space was sold off in small 
parcels by the unwise trustees until to-day only the 
present grounds are left. The land should never 
have been allowed to pass from its original use. In 
the midst of the busy city such an open space would 
have been a charming feature, providing air and 
sunshine to the commercial district surrounding it. 
Small and formal as it is, the courthouse lot even 
now draws to its borders the unfortunate men of 
the city who are "down and out." They may there 
be seen any pleasant day on its curb, basking in the 



100 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

sunshine. The present courthouse was not begun 
until 1835, and so does not come into this part of 
Louisville's history. 

Louisville leads the world as a tobacco market, 
yet its first growth and sales began in a small way. 
As early as 1783 small tobacco-growers began to 
bring their surplus crops to town along the old 
buffalo trails. They formed a queer procession. A 
hogshead was fitted with an axle, running directly 
through the center of the hogshead and sticking out 
a foot or so. To these ends rope shafts or long 
hickory poles were fastened, and the farmer's old 
horse was hitched in. Along came the procession, 
the farmer walking and driving the horse, the hogs- 
head rolling over and over along the trace or road. 
John Campbell owned the first tobacco warehouse 
in Louisville. But the citizens had little cause to 
love John Campbell, and his warehouse was closed 
in 1795 and a new one built at the mouth of Bear- 
grass Creek. He had no ownership in the new one. 
From such small beginnings Louisville has grown to 
her present leadership in the tobacco world. On 
April I, 1913, there were 93,305,635 pounds in the 
hands of dealers in leaf tobacco in this, the Fifth 
District of Kentucky. The storage capacity of her 
warehouses is now the largest in the world and her 
facilities for handling the weed are the greatest. 
Foreign tobacco buyers maintain permanent head- 
quarters in this city. 

Whisky was one of Kentucky's earliest products, 
and Louisville is to-day the largest whisky market 
in the world. Good corn first began to be made into 



SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 



101 



whisky in 1783, in a little distillery at Fifth Street 
and the river, by Evan Williams. He had no license 
to make it, but (like the moonshiner of to-day) he 




liituiiirj 



THE JEFFERSON COUNTY COURTHOUSE OF 1811 



considered that the corn was his, the land on which 
it grew was his, the distillery was his — then why not 
the finished product? He carried on his business 
in this unlawful way for some tim.e before he was 
caught up with and sued. Williams was a member 



102 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILlvE 

of the very board of trustees whose duty it was to 
enforce the suit, and since he saw to it that the other 
members were kept suppHed with plenty of his very 
best whisky he escaped heavy fines. The beginning 
of this whisky trade was very small, but it has grown 
to gigantic proportions. On the last day of October, 
1913, 74,887,697 gallons of whisky were in bond in 
this district. 

Louisville's first cemetery received its first occu- 
pant in 1786. Baxter Square now occupies the site. 
It was at that date a few feet larger than it is now, 
and was enclosed with a "worm" fence. A worm 
fence is a wooden fence made of rails piled on each 
other in zig-zag fashion. One has now to go far 
into the country to see one. This graveyard was the 
only bit of land except the courthouse square which 
was saved from John Campbell's greed. By 1820 it 
was filling up so fast that the law forbade any more 
burials in it, and a new cemetery was opened on 
Jefferson Street from Sixteenth to Eighteenth, the 
western end of which was reserved for colored people. 
That end now has on it the Jefferson Branch of the 
Louisville Free Public Library — a beautiful new 
building. The Roman Catholics bought the eastern 
end of the cemetery for their dead. The earliest 
cemetery, where Baxter Square now is, lay untouched 
for a long time after it was abandoned for burials. 
Then most of the bodies in it were removed, the 
space was shortened, and the land was given over 
for a public park. The present writer knows of one 
little five-year-old baby boy whose body lies hidden 
beneath the western curb of the pavement outside 



SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 



103 



of that cemetery, his Httle grave lost sight of in the 
absence of the family from the city. 

Hotels in early Louisville were called taverns. 
The first tavern was built on a lot facing the river 
and between Sixth and Seventh streets. It would 
not be thought to look much like a hotel now. It 
was a double log house two stories high, but some of 




A WORM FENCE 



the most famous men of the nation stopped there in 
their travels. Doctor McMurtrie, writing in 1819, 
tells that in 18 16 Louisville had two hotels and several 
taverns. He says the hotels were "conducted in a 
very superior style." What this ''superior style" 
was we may gather from a letter written, in 181 6 by a 
Mr. Fearon, who was sent to America by thirty-nine 
English families to learn whether any parts of the 
United States would be agreeable to them for a 
residence. Mr. Fearon visited Louisville, and the 
following is a part of what he wrote back to England : 



104 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

"I boarded at both hotels, Allen's Washington Hall 
and Gwathing's [Gwathmey's] Indian Queen. They 
are similar establishments and both on a very large 
scale; the former averages 80 boarders per day; the 
latter, 140. The hotels here are conducted differently 
from those with which you are acquainted. The 
place for washing is in the open yard where there is 
a large cistern, several towels, and a negro in attend- 
ance. The sleeping rooms commonly contain from 
four to eight bedsteads, having mattresses upon them, 
but frequently no feather beds, sheets of calico, two 
blankets and a quilt. The bedsteads have no cur- 
tains, and the rooms are generally unprovided with 
conveniences." No first-class hotel was built in 
Louisville until 1832, when the Louisville Hotel came 
into existence. 

Louisville's first City Directory was issued in 1832. 
It has some amusing statements in it. For example, 
the address of the residence of ''Thomas Joyes, 
Gentleman," is given as "Fifth Street between Main 
and Chestnut." We suppose "Mr. Joyes, Gentle- 
man," had "some" front yard. Evidently his children 
did not have to play in the streets. In the 1832 
Directory the population of Louisville in 1788 is put 
down at thirty; in 1800 at six hundred; in 1820 at 
4,012; in the succeeding ten years the population 
figures had moved up to 10,336. 

The first newspaper published in Louisville was 
issued in 1801 — "The Farmers' Library," owned by 
Samuel Vail. It never amounted to very much. 
The first really valuable newspaper was issued in 
1 81 7 — "The Public Advertiser," founded by Shad- 



106 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

rach Penn, who was an able editor. The newspapers 
now leading in politics and current events did not 
come into existence during the period of which this 
volume treats. 

Early Louisville had notable men and women as 
guests, and men and women of shining mark as 
residents. If, as Buret says, "the strongest nation is 
that which counts the most robust men interested in 
its defense, animated by its spirit, and possessing 
the feeling of its destiny," a roster of Louisville's 
citizens, from George Rogers Clark on Corn Island 
to the men who gave freely of their brains, fortunes, 
and time as trustees before the city was turned over 
to its new form of government under a mayor, would 
bespeak for our city a peculiar strength. Among the 
distinguished residents of 1819 was J. J. Audubon, 
the world-renowned ornithologist. He had an adver- 
tisement in the Courier of February 12, 1819, offering 
to teach a class in drawing or to paint portraits, which 
he declared ''shall be strong likenesses." Audubon's 
son was for many years a clerk in the store of Mr. 
Berthoud, at Shippingport. A distinguished guest 
of Louisville in 1825 was, like Audubon, a French- 
man — Lafayette. 

The first President of the United States to visit 
Louisville while in office was James Monroe, fifth 
president. He came on the 23d of June, 1819, 
accompanied by General Andrew Jackson. Monroe 
wore the undress uniform of an officer of the Revo- 
lutionary Army — a blue military coat made of home- 
spun goods, light breeches, and a cocked hat. These 
distinguished men, with their retainers, were the 



SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 107 

guests of Alexander Pope at his home on Jefferson 
Street between Sixth and Seventh. It was in Mr. 
Pope's house and during this visit that Andrew 
Jackson was determined upon as a candidate for the 
presidency, to which office he was first elected in 1829. 
To us of to-day, who regard the original bounds 
of the town as wholly business territory, it seems 
strange to think of homes worthy to shelter a President 
existing within the area of First to Twelfth and the 
river to Chestnut Street. But we must remember 
that in our forefathers' day the town extended hardly 
at all beyond these limits. The residence of Alex- 
ander Pope took up a whole block on the south side 
of Jefferson between Sixth and Seventh streets. At 
the time of Monroe's visit Louisville had passed from 
the ugly log-cabin town of pioneer days to a city of 
fine houses and large estates. Most of these were 
north of Walnut Street. The Preston family lived 
on Jefferson near First; the Bullitt family on Jefferson 
between First and Second ; Harry Weissinger's father 
on Jefferson between Second and Third; James D. 
Breckinridge lived at Fifth and Breckinridge; the 
Prather estate ran from Green to Walnut and from 
Third to Fourth streets; Willis Ranney and John 
Thompson Gray had homes on Jefferson Street. 
Judge S. S. Nicholas built a palatial home on top of 
one of the mounds of the Mound Builders. This was on 
the corner of Fifth and Walnut streets, running back 
originally some three hundred feet. The top of his 
place was reached by a high stone circular stairway. 
His grounds were kept in beautiful fashion. Samuel 
Casseday owned his home where the Paul Jones 



108 THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

building now stands, at Fourth and Jejfferson. Here 
Miss Jennie Casseday, the invalid philanthropist, 
was born. William Garvin and James Anderson had 
homes on the same block. James C. Ford, a Southern 
planter who made his summer home in Louisville, 
had a fine home on Jefferson Street between 
Seventh and Eighth. He was the grandfather of 
Miss Helen Dinsmore Huntington, who lately 
married Vincent Astor. All of these homes, and 
many others not mentioned, were homes of 
noteworthy people, and were kept in a style to 
make the little city famous for its beauty and 
attractiveness. 

A very notable house, which was so near town as 
to be considered a part of Louisville, was erected in 
1804 or 1805 by French residents. It was just off 
the Bardstown Road, and was for some time the resi- 
dence of Louis Philippe, exiled King of France. It 
stood in a tract of about sixty acres. The house was 
a two-story stone front, with long French windows 
reaching to the floor, and there was a little stone 
chapel at the side, which was for the use of the king. 
In the spring of 1913 five acres of this tract were 
sold to Mr. J. G. Hager, who tore down the historic 
building to make way for three modern residences. 
The old house attracted the attention of visitors from 
far and near. Some years ago a representative of 
one of the Paris papers came over to write it up, 
and took back with him pictures of the house, chapel, 
and the beautiful French gardens surrounding the 
place. The house at one time had the reputation 
of being haunted, as doors would unexpectedly fly 



SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 109 

Open with no one near, and mysterious noises were 
heard. But in later years all was peaceful. 

Judge Fortunatus Cosby, an early resident, had 
his home on Seventh Street between Main and Mar- 
ket. It is said that his cabin home had no door, 
and that Mrs. Cosby was sometimes compelled to 
make a great fire inside the cabin and hang blankets 
across the doorway, to keep the wolves away. Mr. 
Cosby later built a home on the ground now occu- 
pied by the Evening Post newspaper, occupying the 
entire square. It had an orchard in the rear, where 
Macauley's theater now is. This property afterward 
became the Prather home. Opposite it, where the 
Pendennis Club now stands, was the fine residence 
of Mr. John I. Jacob, taking in all the space from 
Walnut to Chestnut and from Third to Fourth 
streets. Adjoining this was James Guthrie's home, 
running to Chestnut Street and to Second on the 
east side. Mr. Guthrie was Secretary of the United 
States Treasury under President Pierce, in 1853. 

We believe only one of the early stores of Louis- 
ville has had a continuous existence on the same 
spot up to the present day. This is the book and 
stationery store of John P. Morton & Company. 
For nearly ninety years the splendid record begun 
for it by Mr. John P. Morton has been maintained. 
It is a record of fair and honorable dealing, of business 
ability and commercial success. Until a few years 
ago this firm stood to the book-making and book- 
selling world as the American Book Company stands 
to-day. The men who are now conducting it began 
in the store as lads and have grown gray in its 



no THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 

service. It Is unique in Louisville life, and deserves 
special mention in any history of early Louisville, 
for it began its public service before the city got its 
first charter. Between 1803 and 1828 forty books 
and pamphlets were printed for their authors in 
Louisville. Of these, more than one fourth bear the 
imprint of John P. Morton & Company. No other 
printer of these forty books has now a commercial 
existence. It is amusing to tell that when this house 
of Morton's was being erected it was considered a 
skyscraper, and men quit business to go and watch 
its progress upward toward the stars. It is a four- 
story building. The bricks came from Philadelphia in 
wagons by way of Ligo and Cumberland to Red 
Stone Old Fort and Pittsburgh, thence down the 
Ohio in a Kentucky "broad-horn." 

Such in barest outline were the actors, and such 
the train of actions, that formed the beginnings of 
the city of Louisville and that have set its face toward 
progress among the cities of the nations. Nature 
had fitted it to take first rank, and before sixty 
years had passed it had sloughed off the crudities 
of pioneer times; forests had been felled, the clink 
of the builder's trowel was a familiar sound, and there 
had arisen on the spot where lately wild things 
had roamed, a civilized town, possessing the luxuries 
and best usages of good society. It was inhabited 
by a people cultured, refined, and attracting to 
themselves the best men and women of other 
commonwealths. 

It is a far cry from the howling wilderness, the 



SOME EARLIEST THINGS IN LOUISVILLE 



111 



beast, and the savage foe, to orderliness, purpose, and 
erudition. But Louisville passed from the one stage 
to the other with a stateliness and rectitude which 
few other cities in the nation can parallel. The 
cities which preceded her and those which came after 




THE FIRST SKYSCRAPER SOUTH OF THE OHIO RIVER 

began their civic life for the most part with leaders 
already trained in the art of politics, in schools of 
learning, and in centers of order and beauty. Ken- 
tucky began with that roving, errant, restless emi- 
grant, Daniel Boone; and Louisville began with the 
rough soldiers of fortune following General Clark to 
the dim West. 



112 



THE MAKING OF LOUISVILLE 



Account for it as we may, the spontaneous, 
unaided movement of people into Louisville, pouring 
into it like a flood in its rude beginnings, and their 
swift organization of a city under appalling adversi- 
ties, well emphasizes the prepotency of that people, 
and gives us a basis for understanding the strength 
of Louisville men and women of this day. 




A LOUISVILLE HOME 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 
I 

RECOMMENDATIONvS OF THE COURT OF KENTUCKY 
TO THE SEVERAL TOWNS AND GARRISONS 

On December 31, 1776, Fincastle County was 
divided by the Virginia Legislature into three coun- 
ties, one of which was named Kentucky County. It 
embraced ''all that part thereof which lies to the 
south and westward of a line beginning on the Ohio 
river, at the mouth of Great Sandy creek, and running 
up the same and the main or north-easterly branch 
thereof to the Great Laurel Ridge, or Cumberland 
mountain; thence southwestwardly along the said 
mountain to the line of North Carolina." 

In May, 1780, Kentucky County was divided into 
three counties — Jefferson, Fayette, and Lincoln. In 
1792, after Kentucky became a State, Washington 
County was its first-born. 

On April 7, 1779, the County Court of Kentucky 
County sent a letter of advice to the different stations 
regarding the laying out of new towns within the bor- 
ders of Kentucky. As this first piece of official advice 
is a matter full of interest to Louisville citizens, a 
copy of it is here recorded for preservation : 

The Court of Kentucky doth recommend to the 
inhabitants that they keep themselves as united and 
compact as possible one other year, settling them- 

(115) 



116 APPENDIX 

selves in towns and forts; and that they may for their 
greater encouragement procure therein a permanent 
property to the soil and improvements, they recom- 
mend that the intending citizens choose three or more 
of the most judicious of their body as Trustees, who 
shall be invested with authority to lay off such town 
with regularity, to prescribe the terms of residence 
and building therein, to adjudge adequate and just 
compensation to any person who may necessarily be 
aggrieved thereby, and to determine all disputes 
among the citizens in consequence thereof; that they 
return to this court, to be recorded, a fair plan of their 
town, with their proceedings as soon as may be. 

And whereas the new adventurers may be tempted 
to run too great risques in making new settlements 
under the resolve of the assembly made the 24th day 
of January, 1778, the court doth recommend that they 
make on their new^ Claims only some moderate im- 
provements, registering such place with the Surveyor 
of the County or in the Court thereof; they further 
recommend to the new adventurers that they be cau- 
tious of encroaching upon the right and property of 
the old Settlers who have in an exemplary manner de- 
fended that property during a bloody and inveterate 
war. The Claims of members who have long ago 
deserted their claims and in an unfriendly manner 
left but a few to bear the burden of the war, will be 
more than sufficient for all the adventurers. And we 
recommend the old settlers that they give advice and 
assistance to the new adventurers in exploring the 
country and discovering unappropriated lands. 

A Copy, Teste. Levi Todd, CI. Court. 



APPENDIX 117 



II 



THE PETITION OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE 
COUNTY OF KENTUCKY 

The petition for incorporation, signed by thirty- 
nine citizens of the town and sent to the Virginia 
Legislature: 

The petition of the inhabitants of the County of 
Kentucky, Hving at the Falls of the River Ohio, hum- 
bly showeth : 

That your petitioners have at great risque and 
expense removed to this remote part of the State and 
from the advantageous situation of the place both for 
trade and safety were induced to settle here and hav- 
ing laid out a town under directions of persons ap- 
pointed for that purpose by the court of Kentucky 
(a plan of which we have sent to be laid before you) 
and when laid out we cast lots for the choice of the 
lots in said town have improved and settled on some 
of the lots and some have sold their houses and lots 
to persons who have come here since the town w^as 
laid out who are still adding to our improvements; 
but the uncertainty of the title thereto prevents some 
from settling here that are inclined, thereby making 
less secure from any attack of the Indains for w^e are 
informed that the land we have laid out for a town 
at the mouth of a gut that makes into the river oppo- 
site the Falls, was surveyed and patented for 

Connolly, who we have understood has taken part 
with the enemies of America, and agreeable to a late 
act of Assembly, the land we expect will be escheated 
and sold. 

We are well assured that a town established at this 
place will be a great advantage to the inhabitants of 
Kentucky, and we think the plan on which the town 



118 APPENDIX 

is laid out will conduce towards its being a populous 
town and of great advantage to us, as many of us have 
built houses according thereto and will render us 
secure from any hostile intentions of the Indians, and 
will induce merchants to bring articles of commerce 
that the inhabitants of this western part of the State 
stand much in need of. Therefore pray that an act 
may be passed to establish a town at the Falls of the 
Ohio River, agreeably to the plan sent, and that the 
present settlers and holders of lots in the said town 
may have them confirmed to them on paying a com- 
position that may be thought reasonable to any one 
having the right thereto (if thought requisite) or to 
the Commonwealth; and not let us be turned out of 
houses we have built and from lots we have improved 
and are about to build on, and thereby lose the labor 
we have performed at the risque of our lives. 

All these several matters we your petitioners beg 
leave to lay before your Honorable House and hope 
you will comply with our request in adopting the 
prayer of our petition, or some other method that 
you in your wisdom may think proper that will con- 
duce to the interest and security of this exposed part 
of the State, and we as in duty bound shall ever pray. 

May 1st 1780. 

John Hawkins, jr. Jos. Archer. 

Nicholas Merriwether. William Linn. 

William Pope. John Crittenden. 

John Helm. William Kinchloe. 

Benjamin Roberts, jr. John Fleming. 

WiUiam Toole. James Withers, jr. 

Edward Bulger. Charles Curd. 

Thomas Christy. Squire Boone. 

James Harris. Jonathan Boone. 

William Helm. John Conaway. 

Marsham Brashears. Geo. Payne. 

George Hartt. Waller Overton. 



APPENDIX 



119 



Josiah Phelps. 
Jas. Patton. 
John Townsend. 
Thomas Hughes. 
Abraham James. 
Hen French. 
John Tewell. 



Samuel Harrod. 



Mer'th Price. 
Joseph Roberts. 
William Marshall. 
Wm. McBride. 
Alexander Cleland. 
Thomas Whiteside. 
James Kenny. 



120 APPENDIX 



III 



ACT FOR ESTABLISHING THE TOWN OF LOUISVILLE 
AT THE FALLS OF THE OHIO 

Whereas, sundry inhabitants of the county of Ken- 
tucky have, at great expense and hazard, settled them- 
selves upon certain lands at the falls of the Ohio, said 
to be the property of John Conally, and have laid off 
a considerable part thereof into half-acre lots for a 
town, and, having settled thereon, have preferred peti- 
tions to this General Assembly to establish the said 
town. 

Be it therefore enacted, that one thousand acres of 
land, being the forfeited property of John Conally, 

adjoining to the lands of John Campbell and 

Taylor, be and the same is hereby vested in John 
Todd, junior, Stephen Trigg, George Slaughter, John 
Floyd, William Pope, George Merriweather, Andrew 
Hines, James Sullivan, and Marshall Brashiers, gen- 
tlemen, trustees, to be by them, or any four of them, 
laid off into lots of one half acre each, w^ith convenient 
streets and public lots, which shall be and the same 
is hereby established a town by the name of Louisville. 

A nd he it further enacted, that after the said lands 
shall be laid off into lots and streets the said trustees, 
or any foUr of them, shall proceed to sell the said lots, 
or so many of them as they shall judge expedient, at 
public auction, for the best price that can be had, the 
time and place of sale being advertised two months, 
at the court-houses of adjoining counties; the pur- 
chasers respectively to hold their said lots subject to 
the condition of building on each a dwelling-house 
sixteen feet by tw^enty at least, with a brick or stone 
chimney, to be finished within two years from, the day 
of sale. And the said trustees, or any four of them, 
shall and they are hereby empowered to convey the 



APPENDIX 121 

said lots to the purchasers thereof in fee-simple, sub- 
ject to the condition aforesaid, on payment of the 
money arising from such sale to the said trustees for 
the uses hereafter mentioned, that is to say: If the 
money arising from such sale shall amount to thirty 
dollars per acre, the whole shall be paid by the said 
trustees into the treasury of this commonwealth, and 
the overplus, if any, shall be lodged with the court of 
the county of Jefferson, to enable them to defray the 
expenses of erecting the public buildings of the said 
county. Provided, that the owners of lots already 
drawn shall be entitled to the preference therein, upon 
paying to the trustees the sum of thirty dollars for 
each half-acre lot, and shall be thereafter subject to 
the same obligations of settling as other lot-holders 
within the said town. 

And he it further enacted, that the said trustees, or 
the major part of them, shall have power from time to 
time to settle and determine all disputes concerning 
the bounds of the said lots, to settle such rules and 
orders for the regular building thereon as to them shall 
seem best and most convenient. And in case of death 
or removal from the county of any of the said trustees 
the remaining trustees shall supply such vacancies by 
electing others from time to time, who shall be vested 
with the same powers as those already mentioned. 

And be it further enacted, that the purchasers of the 
lots in the said town, so soon as they shall have saved 
the same according to their respective deeds of con- 
veyance, shall have and enjoy all the rights, privileges, 
and immunities which the freeholders and inhabitants 
of other towns in this state not incorporated by charter 
have, hold, and enjoy. 

And he it further enacted, that if the purchaser of 
any lot shall fail to build thereon within the time before 
limited, the said trustees, or a major part of them, 
may thereupon enter into such lot, and may either sell 



122 APPENDIX 

the same again and apply the money toward repairing 
the streets or in any other way for the benefit'of said 
town, or appropriate such lot to public uses for the 
benefit of said town. Provided, that nothing herein 
contained shall extend to affect or injure the title to 
lands claimed by John Campbell, gentleman, or those 
persons whose lots have been laid off on his lands, but 
their titles shall be and remain suspended until the 
said John Campbell shall be released from his 
captivity. 

[Campbell was at this time held as a prisoner by 
the British in Canada.] 



•i 



